Xll PREFACE 



When the reviews began to appear they were not favour- 

 able, and the reception accorded to the book hurt Symonds 

 more than he was ever hurt before or after. Writing on 

 September 1, he says : ' The review of my Essays in the 

 Athenceum (last number) please rejfcl if you can. . . . This is 

 the kind of review which makes one wish to publish nothing 

 again, which blights any pleasure one may have had in one's 

 work, and which puts truths about one's self (apparent as 

 soon as expressed) in a way to dishearten. It does not 

 matter after all. The day's headache has begun, and 1 must 

 stop. That is worse than the " privy nip." ' But his fine 

 courage and generous spirit could not be kept for long under 

 depression. Only six days later he writes : ' I wrote in a 

 night- marish mood to you about an article in the Athenaum 

 on my Essays. I see now that there is a great deal of truth 

 in what the reviewer said. He has spoiled that book for me 

 for ever. But I admit that he had the right to spoil my 

 conceit of it, because he has shown me that my conceit was 

 ill-founded ' ; and, again, the next day : ' You will see that I 

 have taken the Athenaum in good part. ... It is over now, 

 however ; and I am already the better for feeling humbled.' 

 Still, the reception of the book was a bitter disappointment 

 to Symonds, heightened, no doubt, by the continuous fever. 

 ' The days in this fever-prison go so sadly, and the nights so 

 strangely, that I am losing count of time; Euedi [his 

 doctor] holds that the principal irritation is a recrudescence 

 of the old wound in my lung.' But the spiritual reaction 

 inevitable with a man of Symonds' vigorous spiritual fibre 

 soon made itself felt. On October 18 he writes to Henry 

 Sidgwick, ' I have overlived my interest in those two volumes 

 of Essays, and do not care what the Press says. I think I 

 made a mistake in supposing I could do things of that sort 

 well, and that I could acquire distinction by pruning off my 

 personal proclivities towards certain kinds of rhetoric. . . . 

 What do books matter in relation to the soul, when 

 life is trembling in the balance, and the days and nights 

 have no savour in them? Even so, I have love still, and 

 am yours.' It is characteristic of Symonds that a month 



