CXXXV111 



MEMOIR 



Taste in 

 literature. 



might well hesitate in the choice of conduct ; and what owls 

 those people were who marvelled because an Eastern tyrant 

 had killed Uriah, instead of marvelling that he had not killed 

 the prophet also. i 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, 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 

 1 about the Greek things even in translations ; ' he loved their 

 freedom from the mawkish and the rancid. The tale of David in 

 the Bible, the Odyssey, Sophocles, ^Eschylus, Shakespeare, Scott ; 

 old Dumas in his chivalrous note ; Dickens rather than Thackeray, 

 and the Tale of Two Cities out of Dickens : such were some of 

 his preferences. To Ariosto and Boccaccio he was always faith- 

 ful ; Burnt Njal was a late favourite ; and he found at least a 

 passing entertainment in the Arcadia and the Grand Cyrus. 

 George Eliot he outgrew, finding her latterly only sawdust in 

 the mouth ; but her influence, while it lasted, was great, and 

 must have gone some way to form his mind. He was easily set 

 on edge, however, by didactic writing; and held that books 

 should teach no other lesson but what ' real life would teach, 

 were it as vividly presented.' Again, it was the thing made 

 that took him, the drama in the book ; to the book itself, to any 

 merit of the making, he was long strangely blind. He would 



