The Upton Letters | Page 9

the matter in them; the true attitude is the attitude of desiring to apprehend, to progress, to feel. The readers who delight in obscurity, to whom obscurity seems to enhance the value of the thing apprehended, are mixing with the intellectual process a sort of acquisitive and commercial instinct very dear to the British heart. These bewildering and bewildered Browning societies who fling themselves upon Sordello, are infected unconsciously with a virtuous craving for "taking higher ground." Sordello contains many beautiful things, but by omitting the necessary steps in argument, and by speaking of one thing allusively in terms of another, and by a profound desultoriness of thought, the poet produces a blurred and tangled impression. The beauties of Sordello would not lose by being expressed coherently and connectedly.
This is the one thing that I try with all my might to impress on boys; that the essence of all style is to say what you mean as forcibly as possible; the bane of classical teaching is that the essence of successful composition is held to be to "get in" words and phrases; it is not a bad training, so long as it is realised to be only a training, in obtaining a rich and flexible vocabulary, so that the writer has a choice of words and the right word comes at call. But this is not made clear in education, and the result on many minds is that they suppose that the essence of good writing is to search diligently for sparkling words and sonorous phrases, and then to patch them into a duller fabric.
But I stray from my point: all paths in a schoolmaster's mind lead out upon the educational plain.
All that you tell me of your new surroundings is intensely interesting. I am thankful that you feel the characteristic charm of the place, and that the climate seems to suit you. You say nothing of your work; but I suppose that you have had no time as yet. The mere absorbing of new impressions is a fatiguing thing, and no good work can be done until a scene has become familiar. I will discharge your commissions punctually; don't hesitate to tell me what you want. I don't do it from a sense of duty, but it is a positive pleasure for me to have anything to do for you. I long for letters; as soon as possible send me photographs, and not merely inanimate photographs of scenes and places, but be sure that you make a part of them yourself. I want to see you standing, sitting, reading in the new house; and give me an exact and detailed account of your day, please; the food you eat, the clothes you wear; you know my insatiable appetite for trifles.--Ever yours,
T. B.

UPTON, March 5, 1904.
MY DEAR HERBERT,--I have been thinking over your last letter: and by the merest chance I stumbled yesterday on an old diary; it was in 1890--a time, do you remember, when our paths had drifted somewhat apart; you had just married, and I find a rather bitter entry, which it amuses me to tell you of now, to the effect that the marriage of a friend, which ought to give one a new friend, often simply deprives one of an old one--"nec carus aeque nec superstes integer," I add. Then I was, I suppose, hopelessly absorbed in my profession; it was at the time when I had just taken a boarding-house, and suffered much from the dejection which arises from feeling unequal to the new claims.
It amuses me now to think that I could ever have thought of losing your friendship; and it was only temporary; it was only that we were fully occupied; you had to learn camaraderie with your wife, for want of which one sees dryness creep into married lives, when the first divine ardours of passion have died away, and when life has to be lived in the common light of day. Well, all that soon adjusted itself; and then I, too, found in your wife a true and congenial friend, so that I can honestly say that your marriage has been one of the most fortunate events of my life.
But that was not what I meant to write to you about; the point is this. You say that personality is a stubborn thing. It is indeed. I find myself reflecting and considering how much one's character really changes as life goes on; in reading this diary of fourteen years ago, though I have altered in some superficial respects, I was confronted with my unalterable self. I have acquired certain aptitudes; I have learnt, for instance, to understand boys better, to sympathise with them, to put myself in their place, to manage them. I don't think I could enunciate my technique,