d, has written, that he loved the
restaurant-keeper's daughter for her youth, one may be almost certain
that he sought from religion some similar quality, something of that which
the angels find who move perpetually, as Swedenborg has said, towards "the
dayspring of their youth." Johnson's poetry, like Johnson himself before
his last decay, conveys an emotion of joy, of intellectual clearness, of
hard energy; he gave us of his triumph; while Dowson's poetry is sad, as
he himself seemed, and pictures his life of temptation and defeat,

"Unto us they belong
Us the bitter and gay,
Wine and women and song."

Their way of looking at their intoxication showed their characters.
Johnson, who could not have written _Dark Angel_ if he did not suffer from
remorse, showed to his friends an impenitent face, and defeated me when I
tried to prevent the foundation of an Irish convivial club--it was brought
to an end after one meeting by the indignation of the members'
wives--whereas the last time I saw Dowson he was pouring out a glass of
whiskey for himself in an empty corner of my room and murmuring over and
over in what seemed automatic apology "The first to-day."

IX

Two men are always at my side, Lionel Johnson and John Synge whom I was to
meet a little later; but Johnson is to me the more vivid in memory,
possibly because of the external finish, the clearly-marked lineaments of
his body, which seemed but to express the clarity of his mind. I think
Dowson's best verse immortal, bound, that is, to outlive famous novels
and plays and learned histories and other discursive things, but he was
too vague and gentle for my affections. I understood him too well, for I
had been like him but for the appetite that made me search out strong
condiments. Though I cannot explain what brought others of my generation
to such misfortune, I think that (falling backward upon my parable of the
moon) I can explain some part of Dowson's and Johnson's dissipation--

"What portion in the world can the artist have,
Who has awaked from the common dream,
But dissipation and despair?"

When Edmund Spencer described the islands of Phaedria and of Acrasia he
aroused the indignation of Lord Burleigh, "that rugged forehead" and Lord
Burleigh was in the right if morality were our only object.

In those islands certain qualities of beauty, certain forms of sensuous
loveliness were separated from all the general purposes of life, as they
had