theirs in that critical attitude which
refuses to commit itself, which tastes all, but enjoys none; but the
greatest in that earnest, final, rooted, creative, fashion which is the
way of the poets. The one is as a man who spends his days passing from
place to place in search of a dwelling to his mind, but dies at last in
an inn, having known nought of the settled peace of a home; but the
other, howsoever often he has to change his quarters, for howsoever
short a time he may remain in any one of his resting-places, makes of
each a home, with roots that shoot in a night to the foundations of the
world, and blossomed branches that mingle with the stars.

Criticism is a good thing, but poetry is a better. Indeed, criticism
properly _is_ not; it is but a process to an end. We could really do
without it much better than we imagine: for, after all, the question is
not so much _how_ we live, but _do_ we live? Who would not a hundred
times rather be a fruitful Parsee than a barren _philosophe_? Yes, all
lies, of course, in original greatness of soul; and there is really no
state of mind which is not like Hamlet's pipe--if we but know the 'touch
of it,' 'it will discourse most eloquent music.'

Now, it was that great sincerity in Narcissus that has always made us
take him so seriously. And here I would remark in parenthesis, that
trivial surface insincerities, such as we have had glimpses of in his
dealings, do not affect such a great organic sincerity as I am speaking
of. They are excrescences, which the great central health will sooner or
later clear away. It was because he never held an opinion to which he
was not, when called upon, practically faithful; never dreamed a dream
without at once setting about its translation into daylight; never
professed a creed for a week without some essay after the realisation of
its new ideal; it was because he had the power and the courage to glow
mightily, and to some purpose; because his life had a fiery centre,
which his eyes were not afraid of revealing--that I speak of his great
sincerity, a great capacity for intense life. Shallow patterers of
divine creeds were, therefore, most abhorrent to him. 'You must excuse
me, sir,' I remember his once saying to such a one, 'but what are you
doing with cigarette and salutaris? If I held such a belief as yours, I
would stand sandalled, with a rope round my waist, before to-morrow.'

One quaint instance of this earnest attitude in all things occ