io 4 MORE POT-POURRI 



the writers to have crumbled away. Voltaire said : ' On 

 doit des regards aux vivants : on ne doit aux morts que 

 la v6riteV Had I myself written beautiful love-letters in 

 my youth, it would be a pride and joy to me to think that 

 generations unborn should appreciate and enjoy the 

 depths of my devotion, and forgive my weaknesses for 

 the one great reason which will endure for ever, * because 

 she loved much.' A little boy asked : ' Why is every- 

 one called " poor " and " good " when they are put into a 

 box in the ground ? ' I say : What is it all the world for- 

 gives in the future, though at the time society must defend 

 itself by hard judgments and stern morality? What we 

 all think vile and odious, and what shocks all our best 

 sensibility, though it is inevitable, is the publication of 

 even the most commonplace love-letters in the police 

 or divorce courts. But does not love, above everything 

 that we share with our common humanity, belong to all ? 

 Is it not the most brilliant, glorious possession we have ? 

 Are we not really proud of it even when it is mis- 

 directed ? Is not the perusal of unselfish, passionate, de- 

 voted letters such as, for instance, Mary Wollstonecraft's 

 letters to Imlay (a perfectly unworthy object) a better 

 lesson to women than all the articles, all the lectures, 

 and all the sermons ever preached ? And why should we 

 not each of us gain strength through the publication of 

 letters which show the weakness of love in gifted beings 

 like Keats and Shelley ? I cannot see any objection, and 

 with pride and joy would I have given, to those who cared 

 to read it, this interesting little bundle of papers, yellowed 

 by time, and written by my parents in the sunshine of their 

 youth, portraying that nothing really came between the 

 two but that old struggle difference of opinion on religious 

 subjects and also showing the confident hope on both 

 sides that love ought to conquer. 



Time crystallises, to my mind, such material into 



