g man beginning to concern
himself with beauty in art and literature, was at least a quickening
influence. Of De Quincey he spoke with an admiration which I had
difficulty in sharing, and I remember his showing me with pride a set of
his works bound in half-parchment, with pale gold lettering on the white
backs, and with the cinnamon edges which he was so fond of. Of Flaubert
we rarely met without speaking. He thought _Julien l'Hospitalier_ as
perfect as anything he had done. _L'Education Sentimentale_ was one of
the books which he advised me to read; that, and _Le Rouge et le Noir_
of Stendhal; and he spoke with particular admiration of two episodes in
the former, the sickness and the death of the child. Of the Goncourts he
spoke with admiration tempered by dislike. Their books often repelled
him, yet their way of doing things seemed to him just the way things
should be done; and done before almost any one else. He often read
_Madame Gervaisais_, and he spoke of _Cherie_ (for all its 'immodesty')
as an admirable thing, and a model for all such studies.

Once, as we were walking in Oxford, he pointed to a window and said,
with a slow smile: 'That is where I get my Zolas.' He was always a
little on his guard in respect of books; and, just as he read Flaubert
and Goncourt because they were intellectual neighbours, so he could read
Zola for mere pastime, knowing that there would be nothing there to
distract him. I remember telling him about _The Story of an African
Farm_, and of the wonderful human quality in it. He said, repeating his
favourite formula: 'No doubt you are quite right; but I do not suppose I
shall ever read it.' And he explained to me that he was always writing
something, and that while he was writing he did not allow himself to
read anything which might possibly affect him too strongly, by bringing
a new current of emotion to bear upon him. He was quite content that his
mind should 'keep as a solitary prisoner its own dream of a world'; it
was that prisoner's dream of a world that it was his whole business as a
writer to remember, to perpetuate.

1906.

FOOTNOTE:

[4] In this same year he intended to follow the _Appreciations_ by a
volume of _Studies of Greek Remains_, in which he then meant to include
the studies in Platonism, not yet written; and he had thought of putting
together a volume of 'theory,' which was to include the essay on Style.
In two or three years' time, he thought, _Gastom de Latour