In My Vicarage Garden 



that were smokers, and so he would not say any- 

 thing about it ; he would leave it alone as " ower 

 good for banning and ower bad for blessing." 

 But we cannot so explain away his blindness, if 

 it was so, to all the beauties of English archi- 

 tecture. I am inclined to think that it must be 

 put down to that reticence on everything con- 

 nected with himself which has made it hopeless 

 for his biographers to make out the events of his 

 life from his writings. I can well fancy that he 

 had such an abhorrence of anything like puffing 

 or advertising himself that he would — it may 

 have been purposely or it may have been uncon- 

 sciously — abstain from saying many things which 

 might bear that construction. In that way he 

 would say nothing of the palaces or fine houses 

 to which he may have had access, lest it should 

 be put down to a boasting of his acquaintance 

 with the great men of the land ; and he may 

 have abstained from details of other great build- 

 ings lest it should be put down to a desire to 

 boast of his travels and his knowledge. That he 

 had in him this self-restraint and self-effacement 

 is no mere surmise ; it comes out in many ways ; 

 and it was a part of his character which many 

 other great minds have shown. A very similar in- 

 stance may be found in Bishop Butler, whose fame 

 rests on his two great works, the Analogy and 

 the Sermons, which will probably be among the 

 great possessions of the English language as long 

 as Shakespeare's works, but of whom very little 

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