I. MOSS. 21 



other leaves are to grow. Not to cover the rocks 

 with golden velvet only, but to fill their crannies 

 with the dark earth, through which nobler creatures 

 shall one day seek their being. 



12. "Grant but as many sorts of mind as moss." 

 Pope could not have known the hundredth part 

 of the number of ' sorts ' of moss there are ; and 

 I suppose he only chose the word because it was 

 a monosyllable beginning with m, and the best 

 English general expression for despised and minute 

 structures of plants. But a fate rules the words of 

 wise men, which makes their words truer, and worth 

 more, than the men themselves know. No other 

 plants have so endless variety on so similar a 

 structure as the mosses ; and none teach so well 

 the Humility of Death. As for the death of our 

 bodies, we have learned, wisely, or unwisely, to 

 look the fact of that in the face. But none of us, 

 I think, yet care to look the fact of the death of 

 our minds in the face. I do not mean death of 

 our souls, but of our mental work. So far as it 

 is good art, indeed, and done in realistic form, it 

 may perhaps not die ; but so far as it was only 

 good thought — good, for its time, and apparently a 

 great achievement therein — that good, useful thought 

 may yet in the future become a foolish thought, 

 and then die quite away, — it, and the memory of 



