is vulgar to let a consciousness of superiority
escape you. But it is not priggish to be virtuous, or to have a high
artistic standard, or to care more for masterpieces of literature than
for second-rate books, any more than it is priggish to be rich or
well-connected. The priggishness comes in when you begin to compare
yourself with others, and to draw distinctions. The Pharisee in the
parable was a prig; and just as I have known priggish hunting men, and
priggish golfers, and even priggish card-players, so I have known
people who were priggish about having a low standard of private virtue,
because they disapproved of people whose standard was higher. The only
cure is frankness and simplicity; and one should practise the art of
talking simply and directly among congenial people of what one admires
and believes in.

How I run on! But it is a comfort to write about these things to some
one who will understand; to "cleanse the stuff'd bosom of the perilous
stuff that weighs upon the heart." By the way, how careless the
repetition of "stuff'd" "stuff" is in that line! And yet it can't be
unintentional, I suppose?

I enjoy your letters very much; and I am glad to hear that you are
beginning to "take interest," and are already feeling better. Your
views of the unchangeableness of personality are very surprising; but I
must think them over for a little; I will write about them before long.
Meanwhile, my love to you all.--Ever yours,

T. B.

UPTON,
Feb. 25, 1904.

DEAR HERBERT,--You ask what I have been reading. Well, I have been
going through Newman's Apologia for the twentieth time, and as usual
have fallen completely under the magical spell of that incomparable
style; its perfect lucidity, showing the very shape of the thought
within, its simplicity (not, in Newman's case, I think, the result of
labour, but of pure instinctive grace), its appositeness, its dignity,
its music. I oscillate between supreme contentment as a reader, and
envious despair as a writer; it fills one's mind up slowly and richly,
as honey fills a vase from some gently tilted bowl. There is no sense
of elaborateness about the book; it was written swiftly and easily out
of a full heart; then it is such a revelation of a human spirit, a
spirit so innocent and devoted and tender, and, moreover, charged with
a sweet naive egotism as of a child. It was written, as Newman himself
said, IN TEARS; but I do not think they were tears of bitterness,