JUNE 365 



by the varied materials used for the decoration of this 

 marvellous cabinet. 



Of course I re-read 'Romola'; everyone does and 

 ought, as being in the atmosphere of Florence extraor- 

 dinarily increases the enjoyment of what is in many 

 ways a very wonderful book, full of fine things and pas- 

 sionately sympathetic with women's trials. 



In a very old notebook of mine, I find -the following 

 sentence. I have no idea by whom it was written ; but 

 it so exactly describes why certain books, and indeed 

 certain people, appeal to me when others that are in 

 many respects better leave me cold and indifferent, that 

 I repeat it now in my old age, agreeing with it as I did 

 at twenty : 



'We readily overlook all that is tasteless and igno- 

 rant for the sake of that power which, in reminding us 

 of the misery of the world, translates it into something 

 softening, elevating, uniting. We should fully allow 

 that some immortal work, and a great deal of the most 

 popular work, is almost entirely without the feeling. 

 There is scarcely a touch of it in Homer; there is not a 

 touch of it in many a novel much sought for at the 

 libraries. But to us it appears one of the greatest gifts 

 of the writer of fiction. It is not that we desire to be 

 always contemplating the misery of the world ; when 

 we take up a novel w^ often desire to forget it. But an 

 author who does not know it cannot make us forget it; 

 and a writer who is to deliver us from its oppressive 

 forms must be able to translate the manifold troubles 

 of life, with aU their bewildering entanglement, their 

 distracting pettiness, into something that releases such 

 tears as the foreign slaves shed on Hector's bier. 

 " Their woes their own, a hero's death the plea." ' 



No modern novelist that I know does this better than 

 George Eliot. 



