(if
possible) be a little dull into the bargain. I know that good work
sometimes hits; but, with my hand on my heart, I think it is by an
accident. And I know also that good work must succeed at last; but that
is not the doing of the public; they are only shamed into silence or
affectation. I do not write for the public; I do write for money, a
nobler deity; and most of all for myself, not perhaps any more noble,
but both more intelligent and nearer home.

Let us tell each other sad stories of the bestiality of the beast whom
we feed. What he likes is the newspaper; and to me the press is the
mouth of a sewer, where lying is professed as from an university chair,
and everything prurient, and ignoble, and essentially dull, finds its
abode and pulpit. I do not like mankind; but men, and not all of
these--and fewer women. As for respecting the race, and, above all, that
fatuous rabble of burgesses called "the public," God save me from such
irreligion!--that way lies disgrace and dishonour. There must be
something wrong in me, or I would not be popular.

This is perhaps a trifle stronger than my sedate and permanent opinion.
Not much, I think. As for the art that we practise, I have never been
able to see why its professors should be respected. They chose the
primrose path; when they found it was not all primroses, but some of it
brambly, and much of it uphill, they began to think and to speak of
themselves as holy martyrs. But a man is never martyred in any honest
sense in the pursuit of his pleasure; and _delirium tremens_ has more of
the honour of the cross. We were full of the pride of life, and chose,
like prostitutes, to live by a pleasure. We should be paid if we give
the pleasure we pretend to give; but why should we be honoured?

I hope some day you and Mrs. Gosse will come for a Sunday; but we must
wait till I am able to see people. I am very full of Jenkin's life; it
is painful, yet very pleasant, to dig into the past of a dead friend,
and find him, at every spadeful, shine brighter. I own, as I read, I
wonder more and more why he should have taken me to be a friend. He had
many and obvious faults upon the face of him; the heart was pure gold. I
feel it little pain to have lost him, for it is a loss in which I cannot
believe; I take it, against reason, for an absence; if not to-day, then
to-morrow, I still fancy I shall see him in the door; and then, now when
I know him better, how glad a meeting! Yes, if I cou