Pater speaks in the case of Aurelius, were only confined to
those evil-bearing trees: alas! it is all blossom with us moderns, good
or bad alike, and purity or putrescence are all one to us, so that they
shine. I suppose few regard Giotto's circle as his greatest work: would
that more did. The lust of the eye, with Gautier as high-priest, is too
much with us.
The poet, too, who perhaps began with the simple ambition of becoming a
'literary man,' soon finds how radically incapable of ever being merely
that he is. Alas! how soon the nimbus fades from the sacred name of
'author.' At one time he had been ready to fall down and kiss the
garment's hem, say, of--of a 'Canterbury' editor (this, of course, when
very, very young), as of a being from another sphere; and a writer in
_The Fortnightly_ had swam into his ken, trailing visible clouds of
glory. But by and by he finds himself breathing with perfect composure
in that rarefied air, and in course of time the grey conviction settles
upon him that these fabled people are in no wise different from the
booksellers and business men he had found so sordid and dull--no more
individual or delightful as a race; and he speedily comes to the old
conclusion he had been at a loss to understand a year or two ago, that,
as a rule, the people who do not write books are infinitely to be
preferred to the people who do. When he finds exceptions, they occur as
they used to do in shop and office--the charm is all independent of the
calling; for just as surely as a man need not grow mean, and hard, and
dried up, however prosperous be his iron-foundry, so sure is it that a
man will not grow generous, rich-minded, loving, and all that is golden
by merely writing of such virtues at so much a column.
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