-speaking in these matters. Too often, with the literary standard
of decorum which prevails, such self-revelations are brushed aside as
morbid, introspective, egotistical. They are no more so than any other
kind of investigation, for all investigation is conditioned by the
personality of the investigator. All that is needed is that an observer
of life should be perfectly candid and sincere, that he should not
speak in a spirit of vanity or self-glorification, that he should try to
disentangle what are the real motives that make him act or refrain from
acting.

As an instance of what I mean by confession of the frankest order,
dealing in this case not only with literature but also with morality,
let me take the sorrowful words which Ruskin wrote in his Praeterita, as
a wearied and saddened man, when there was no longer any need for him
to pretend anything, or to involve any of his own thoughts or beliefs in
any sort of disguise. He took up Shakespeare at Macugnaga, in 1840, and
he asks why the loveliest of Shakespeare's plays should be "all mixed
and encumbered with languid and common work--to one's best hope
spurious certainly, so far as original, idle and disgraceful--and all
so inextricably and mysteriously that the writer himself is not only
unknowable, but inconceivable; and his wisdom so useless, that at this
time of being and speaking, among active and purposeful Englishmen,
I know not one who shows a trace of ever having felt a passion of
Shakespeare's, or learnt a lesson from him."

That is of course the sad cry of one who is interested in life
primarily, and in art only so far as it can minister to life. It may be
strained and exaggerated, but how far more vital a saying than to
expand in voluble and vapid enthusiasm over the insight and nobleness
of Shakespeare, if one has not really felt one's life modified by that
mysterious mind!

Of course such self-revelation as I speak of will necessarily fall into
the hands of unquiet, dissatisfied, melancholy people. If life is a
common-place and pleasant sort of business, there is nothing particular
to say or to think about it. But for all those--and they are many--who
feel that life misses, by some blind, inevitable movement, being the
gracious and beautiful thing it seems framed to be, how can such as
these hold their peace? And how, except by facing it all, and looking
patiently and bravely at it, can we find a remedy for its sore
sicknesses? That method has bee