The Path to Rome | Page 5

the Grand Climacteric?
AUCTOR. I have no time to tell you, for it would lead us into a
discussion on Astrology, and then perhaps to a question of physical
science, and then you would find I was not orthodox, and perhaps
denounce me to the authorities.
I will tell you this much; it is the moment (not the year or the month,
mind you, nor even the hour, but the very second) when a man is grown
up, when he sees things as they are (that is, backwards), and feels
solidly himself. Do I make myself clear? No matter, it is the Shock of
Maturity, and that must suffice for you.
But perhaps you have been reading little brown books on Evolution,
and you don't believe in Catastrophes, or Climaxes, or Definitions? Eh?
Tell me, do you believe in the peak of the Matterhorn, and have you
doubts on the points of needles? Can the sun be said truly to rise or set,
and is there any exact meaning in the phrase, 'Done to a turn' as applied
to omelettes? You know there is; and so also you must believe in
Categories, and you must admit differences of kind as well as of degree,
and you must accept exact definition and believe in all that your fathers
did, that were wiser men than you, as is easily proved if you will but
imagine yourself for but one moment introduced into the presence of
your ancestors, and ask yourself which would look the fool. Especially
must you believe in moments and their importance, and avoid with the
utmost care the Comparative Method and the argument of the Slowly
Accumulating Heap. I hear that some scientists are already beginning to
admit the reality of Birth and Death--let but some brave few make an
act of Faith in the Grand Climacteric and all shall yet be well.
Well, as I was saying, this Difficulty of Beginning is but one of three,
and is Inexplicable, and is in the Nature of Things, and it is very
especially noticeable in the Art of Letters. There is in every book the
Difficulty of Beginning, the Difficulty of the Turning-Point (which is
the Grand Climacteric of a Book)--
LECTOR. What is that in a Book?
AUCTOR. Why, it is the point where the reader has caught on, enters

into the Book and desires to continue reading it.
LECTOR. It comes earlier in some books than in others.
AUCTOR. As you say ... And finally there is the Difficulty of Ending.
LECTOR. I do not see how there can be any difficulty in ending a
book.
AUCTOR. That shows very clearly that you have never written one, for
there is nothing so hard in the writing of a book--no, not even the
choice of the Dedication--as is the ending of it. On this account only
the great Poets, who are above custom and can snap their divine fingers
at forms, are not at the pains of devising careful endings. Thus, Homer
ends with lines that might as well be in the middle of a passage; Hesiod,
I know not how; and Mr Bailey, the New Voice from Eurasia, does not
end at all, but is still going on.
Panurge told me that his great work on Conchology would never have
been finished had it not been for the Bookseller that threatened law;
and as it is, the last sentence has no verb in it. There is always
something more to be said, and it is always so difficult to turn up the
splice neatly at the edges. On this account there are regular models for
ending a book or a Poem, as there are for beginning one; but, for my
part, I think the best way of ending a book is to rummage about among
one's manuscripts till one has found a bit of Fine Writing (no matter
upon what subject), to lead up the last paragraphs by no matter what
violent shocks to the thing it deals with, to introduce a row of asterisks,
and then to paste on to the paper below these the piece of Fine Writing
one has found.
I knew a man once who always wrote the end of a book first, when his
mind was fresh, and so worked gradually back to the introductory
chapter, which (he said) was ever a kind of summary, and could not be
properly dealt with till a man knew all about his subject. He said this
was a sovran way to write History.
But it seems to me that this is pure extravagance, for it would lead one
at last to beginning at the bottom of the last page, like the Hebrew
Bible, and (if it were fully carried out) to writing one's sentences
backwards till one