242 A GARDEN DIARY 
SEPTEMBER II, 1900 
O one ends. Yet, even in the very act of 
ending, qualms arise. Thinking of what 
lies under one’s hand, no longer as a sheaf 
of familiar manuscript, but as a full-blown book, 
printed, bound, stitched, and a’ the lave o’ it, 
misgivings awake, and are lively. Only yester- 
day I sounded the praises of the diary, and I 
do so still; yet the manifest destiny of every 
diary is to live a life of absolute seclusion, and, 
when it has served its turn, to feed the fire. It 
is true that one may murmur something to 
oneself about ‘“‘subjective”; “subjective forms 
of literature,” but the words ring hollow, and 
have little validity. In a well-known passage 
Carlyle has described a visit which he paid 
to the Sage of Highgate, whom he found 
sitting in his Dodona oak grove—otherwise 
Mr. Gilman’s house and garden—‘‘as a kind of 
Magus, girt in mystery and enigma.” “TI still 
recollect,” Carlyle says, ‘‘his ‘ object,’ and ‘sub- 
ject, and how he sang and snuffled them into 
