ing that for the writer it tends to destroy entire and simple
living--all hearty and final enjoyment in life. Joy and sorrow, death
and marriage, the comic circumstance and the tragic, what befalls him,
what he observes, what he is brought into contact with, do not affect him
as they affect other men; they are secrets to be rifled, stones to be
built with, clays to be moulded into artistic shape. In giving emotional
material artistic form, there is indisputably a certain noble pleasure;
but it is of a solitary and severe complexion, and takes a man out of the
circle and sympathies of his fellows. I do not say that this kind of
life makes a man selfish, but it often makes him _seem_ so; and the
results of this seeming, on friendship and the domestic relationships,
for instance, are as baleful as if selfishness really existed. The
peculiar temptation which besets men of letters, the curious playing with
thought and emotion, the tendency to analyse and take everything to
pieces, has two results, and neither aids his happiness nor even his
literary success. On the one hand, and in relation to the social
relations, it gives him somewhat of an icy aspect, and so breaks the
spring and eagerness of affectionate response. For the best affection is
shy, reticent, undemonstrative, and needs to be drawn out by its like.
If unrecognised, like an acquaintance on the street, it passes by, making
no sign, and is for the time being a stranger. On the other hand, the
desire to say a fine thing about a phenomenon, whether natural or moral,
prevents a man from reaching the inmost core of the phenomenon. Entrance
into these matters will never be obtained by the most sedulous seeking.
The man who has found an entrance cannot tell how he came there, and he
will never find his way back again by the same road. From this law
arises all the dreary conceits and artifices of the poets; it is through
the operation of the same law that many of our simple songs and ballads
are inexpressibly affecting, because in them there is no consciousness of
authorship; emotion and utterance are twin born, consentaneous--like
sorrow and tears, a blow and its pain, a kiss and its thrill. When a man
is happy, every effort to express his happiness mars its completeness. I
am not happy at all unless I am happier than I know. When the tide is
full there is silence in channel and creek. The silence of the lover
when he clasps the maid is better than the passio