s by A and B respectively) "and propounded the matter
to A, without any preparation. Result.--'I am surprised, and I should
have been surprised if I had seen it in the newspaper without previous
confidence from you. But nothing more. N--no. Certainly not. Nothing
more. I don't see that there is anything derogatory in it, even now when
you ask me that question. I think upon the whole that most people would
be glad you should have the money, rather than other people. It might be
misunderstood here and there, at first; but I think the thing would very
soon express itself, and that your own power of making it express itself
would be very great.' As she wished me to ask B, who was in another
room, I did so. She was for a moment tremendously disconcerted, '_under
the impression that it was to lead to the stage_' (!!). Then, without
knowing anything of A's opinion, closely followed it. That absurd
association had never entered my head or yours; but it might enter some
other heads for all that. Take these two opinions for whatever they are
worth. A (being very much interested and very anxious to help to a right
conclusion) proposed to ask a few people of various degrees who know
what the Readings are, what _they_ think--not compromising me, but
suggesting the project afar-off, as an idea in somebody else's mind. I
thanked her, and said 'Yes,' of course."

[215 Oh! for my sake do you with Fortune chide
The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds,
That did not better for my life provide
Than public means which public manners breeds.
Thence comes it that my name receives a brand;
And almost thence my nature is subdu'd
To what it works in, like the dyer's hand. . .
Pity me, then, and wish I were renew'd. . .

Sonnet cxi.

And in the preceding Sonnet cx.

Alas, 'tis true I have gone here and there,
And made myself a motley to the view,
Gor'd mine own thoughts, sold cheap what is most dear. . .

[216] Vol. I. pp. 72-3. I repeat from that passage one or two sentences,
though it is hardly fair to give them without the modifications that
accompany them. "A too great confidence in himself, a sense that
everything was possible to the will that would make it so, laid
occasionally upon him self-imposed burdens greater than might be borne
by any one with safety. In that direction there was in him, at such
times, something even hard and aggressive;