said, with a smile.

"Yes," I said. "It's poor stuff, I see. But I didn't know it was so bad
when I wrote it; I thought I was making the best of a poor subject rather
ingeniously. I am afraid I am rather stupid."

"If I thought you really felt like that," said Father Payne, "I should be
sorry for you. But I expect it is only your idea of modesty?"

"No," I said, "it isn't modesty--it's humility, I think."

"No one has any business to think himself humble," said Father Payne. "The
moment you do that, you are conceited. It's not a virtue to grovel. A man
ought to know exactly what he is worth. You needn't be always saying what
you are, worth, of course. It's modest to hold your tongue. But humility
is, or ought to be, extinct as a virtue. It belongs to the time when people
felt bound to deplore the corruption of their heart, and to speak of
themselves as worms, and to compare themselves despondently with God. That
in itself is a piece of insolence; and it isn't a wholesome frame of mind
to dwell on one's worthlessness, and to speak of one's righteousness as
filthy rags. It removes every stimulus to effort. If you really feel like
that, you had better take to your bed permanently--you will do less harm
there than pretending to do work in the value of which you don't believe."

"But what is the word for the feeling which one has when one reads a really
splendid book, let us say, or hears a perfect piece of music?" I said.

"Well, it ought to be gratitude and admiration," said Father Payne. "Why
mix yourself up with it at all?"

"Because I can't help it," I said; "I think of the way in which I muddle on
with my writing, and I feel how hopeless I am."

"That's all wrong, my boy," said Father Payne; "you ought to say to
yourself--'So that is _his_ way of putting things and, by Jove, it's
superb. Now I've got to find my way of putting things!' You had better go
and work in the fields like an honest man, if you don't feel you have got
anything to say worth saying. You have your own point of view, you know:
try and get it down on paper. It isn't exactly the same as, let us say,
Shakespeare's point of view: but if you feel that he has seen everything
worth seeing, and said everything worth saying, then, of course, it is no
good going on. But that is pure grovelling; no lively person ever does feel
that--he says, 'Hang it, he has left _some_ things out!' After all,
everyone has a right to his point of view, and if it can be