he kinds of windows from which it is best to look at the
dazzling limbs of the immortal gods!

Not but what, sometimes, he permits us to throw those "magic
casements" wide open. And then, in how lucid an air, in how clean
and fresh a morning of reality, those pure forms and godlike figures
stand out, their naked feet in the cold, clear dew!

For one must note two things about Walter Pater. He is able to throw
the glimmering mantle of his own elaborate _sophistry of the
senses_ over comparatively fleeting, unarresting objects. And he is
able to compel us to follow, line by line, curve by curve, contour by
contour, the very palpable body and presence of the Beauty that
passeth not away.

In plainer words, he is a great and exact scholar--laborious, patient,
indefatigable, reserved; and, at the same time, a Protean Wizard,
breathing forbidden life into the Tyrian-stained writhings of many
an enchanted Lamia! At a thousand points he is the only modern
literary figure who draws us towards him with the old Leonardian,
Goethean spell. For, like Goethe and Da Vinci, he is never far from
those eternal "Partings of the Ways." which alone make life
interesting.

He is, for instance, more profoundly drenched, dyed, and endued in
"Christian Mythology" than any mortal writer, short of the Saints
themselves. He is more native to the pure Hellenic air than any since
Walter Savage Landor. And he is more subtle, in his understanding
of "German Philosophy" as opposed to "Celtic Romance," than
all--outside the most inner circles--since Hegel--or Heine! The greedy,
capricious "Uranian Babyishness" of his pupil Oscar, with its
peevish clutching at all soft and provocative and glimmering things,
is mere child's play, compared with the deep, dark Vampirism with
which this furtive Hermit drains the scarlet blood of the Vestals of
every Sanctuary.

How little the conventional critics have understood this master of
their own craft! What hopeless people have "rushed in" to interpret
this super-subtle Interpreter! Mr. Gosse has, however, done one
thing for us. Somewhere, somehow, he once drew a picture of
Walter Pater "gambolling," in the moonlight, on the velvet lawn of
his own secluded Oxford garden, like a satin-pawed Wombat! I
always think of that picture. It is a pleasanter one than that of Mark
Pattison, running round his Gooseberry bushes, after great
screaming girls. But they are both touching sketches, and, no doubt,
very indicativ