TASTE IN LITERATURE 201 



hesitate in the choice of conduct ; and what owls 

 those people were who marvelled because an 

 Eastern tyrant had killed Uriah, instead of mar- 

 velling that he had not killed the prophet also. 

 ' Now if Voltaire had helped me to feel that,' 

 said he, ' I could have seen some fun in it.' He 

 loved the comedy which shows a hero human, 

 and yet leaves him a hero ; and the laughter 

 which does not lessen love. 



It was this taste for what is fine in humankind Taste in 



literature. 



that ruled his choice in books. These should all 

 strike a high note, whether brave or tender, and 

 smack of the open air. The noble and simple 

 presentation of things noble and simple, that 

 was the ' nitrogenous food ' of which he spoke 

 so much, which he sought so eagerly, enjoyed 

 so royally. He wrote to an author, the first 

 part of whose story he had seen with sympathy, 

 hoping that it might continue in the same vein. 

 ' That this may be so,' he wrote, ' I long with 

 the longing of David for the water of Bethlehem. 

 But no man need die for the water a poet can 

 give, and all can drink it to the end of time, and 

 their thirst be quenched and the pool never dry 

 — ^and the thirst and the water are both blessed.' 

 It was in the Greeks particularly that he found 

 this blessed water ; he loved ' a fresh air ' which 

 he found ' about the Greek things even in trans- 

 lations ' ; he loved their freedom from the mawkish 



