Essays on Life 



necessarily into our own lives ; we use them 

 and throw them away when we have done 

 with them. I do not speak of these, I do 

 not speak of the Virgils and Alexander Popes, 

 and who can say how many more whose 

 names I dare not mention for fear of offend- 

 ing. They are as stuffed birds or beasts in a 

 Museum ; serviceable no doubt from a scien- 

 tific standpoint, but with no vivid or vivify- 

 ing hold upon us. They seem to be alive, 

 but are not. I am speaking of those who do 

 actually live in us, and move us to higher 

 achievements though they be long dead, 

 whose life thrusts out our own and overrides 

 it. I speak of those who draw us ever more 

 towards them from youth to age, and to think 

 of whom is to feel at once that we are in the 

 hands of those we love, and whom we would 

 most wish to resemble. What is the secret of 

 the hold that these people have upon us ? Is 

 it not that while, conventionally speaking, 

 alive, they most merged their lives in, and 

 were in fullest communion with those among 

 whom they lived ? They found their lives in 



losing them. We never love the memory of 



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