in strange forms, often
inverted and under strange names, often interchanged. Martial[15] is a
poet of no good repute, and it gives a man new thoughts to read his
works dispassionately, and find in this unseemly jester's serious
passages the image of a kind, wise, and self-respecting gentleman. It
is customary, I suppose, in reading Martial, to leave out these
pleasant verses; I never heard of them, at least, until I found them
for myself; and this partiality is one among a thousand things that
help to build up our distorted and hysterical conception of the great
Roman Empire.

This brings us by a natural transition to a very noble book--the
_Meditations_ of Marcus Aurelius.[16] The dispassionate gravity, the
noble forgetfulness of self, the tenderness of others, that are there
expressed and were practised on so great a scale in the life of its
writer, make this book a book quite by itself. No one can read it and
not be moved. Yet it scarcely or rarely appeals to the feelings--those
very mobile, those not very trusty parts of man. Its address lies
further back: its lesson comes more deeply home; when you have read,
you carry away with you a memory of the man himself; it is as though
you had touched a loyal hand, looked into brave eyes, and made a noble
friend; there is another bond on you thenceforward, binding you to
life and to the love of virtue.

Wordsworth[17] should perhaps come next. Every one has been influenced
by Wordsworth, and it is hard to tell precisely how. A certain
innocence, a rugged austerity of joy, a night of the stars, "the
silence that is in the lonely hills," something of the cold thrill of
dawn, cling to his work and give it a particular address to what is
best in us. I do not know that you learn a lesson; you need not--Mill
did not--agree with any one of his beliefs; and yet the spell is cast.
Such are the best teachers: a dogma learned is only a new error--the
old one was perhaps as good; but a spirit communicated is a perpetual
possession. These best teachers climb beyond teaching to the plane of
art; it is themselves, and what is best in themselves, that they
communicate.

I should never forgive myself if I forgot _The Egoist_. It is art, if
you like, but it belongs purely to didactic art, and from all the
novels I have read (and I have read thousands) stands in a place by
itself. Here is a Nathan for the modern David;[18] here is a book to
send the blood into men's faces. Satire, the an