Ruskin do sometimes; but a basic confidence
in the good destiny of life and of the world must underlie his work.

Shakespeare is the prince of optimists. His tragedies are a revelation
of moral order. In "Lear" and "Hamlet" there is a looking forward to
something better, some one is left at the end of the play to right
wrong, restore society and build the state anew. The later plays, "The
Tempest" and "Cymbeline," show a beautiful, placid optimism which
delights in reconciliations and reunions and which plans for the
triumph of external as well as internal good.

If Browning were less difficult to read, he would surely be the
dominant poet in this century. I feel the ecstasy with which he
exclaims, "Oh, good gigantic smile o' the brown old earth this autumn
morning!" And how he sets my brain going when he says, because there
is imperfection, there must be perfection; completeness must come of
incompleteness; failure is an evidence of triumph for the fulness of
the days. Yes, discord is, that harmony may be; pain destroys, that
health may renew; perhaps I am deaf and blind that others likewise
afflicted may see and hear with a more perfect sense! From Browning I
learn that there is no lost good, and that makes it easier for me to
go at life, right or wrong, do the best I know, and fear not. My heart
responds proudly to his exhortation to pay gladly life's debt of pain,
darkness and cold. Lift up your burden, it is God's gift, bear it
nobly.

The man of letters whose voice is to prevail must be an optimist, and
his voice often learns its message from his life. Stevenson's life has
become a tradition only ten years after his death; he has taken his
place among the heroes, the bravest man of letters since Johnson and
Lamb. I remember an hour when I was discouraged and ready to falter.
For days I had been pegging away at a task which refused to get itself
accomplished. In the midst of my perplexity I read an essay of
Stevenson which made me feel as if I had been "outing" in the
sunshine, instead of losing heart over a difficult task. I tried again
with new courage and succeeded almost before I knew it. I have failed
many times since; but I have never felt so disheartened as I did
before that sturdy preacher gave me my lesson in the "fashion of the
smiling face."

Read Schopenhauer and Omar, and you will grow to find the world as
hollow as they find it. Read Green's history of England, and the world
is peopled with hero