ith others, and he will be inclined to an even over-generous
estimate of the value of the work of others. In no respect was the
greatness of D. G. Rossetti more exemplified than in his almost
extravagant appreciation of the work of his friends; and it was to this
royalty of temperament that he largely owed his personal supremacy.

I would believe then that the lack of conspicuous greatness is due
at this time to the overabundant vitality and eagerness of the world,
rather than to any languor or listlessness of spirit. The rise of the
decadent school in art and literature is not the least sign of any
indolent or corrupt deterioration. It rather shows a desperate appetite
for testing sensation, a fierce hunger for emotional experience, a
feverish ambition to impress a point-of-view. It is all part of a revolt
against settled ways and conventional theories. I do not mean that
we can expect to find greatness in this direction, for greatness is
essentially well-balanced, calm, deliberate, and decadence is a sign of
a neurotic and over-vitalised activity.

Our best hope is that this excessive restlessness of spirit will produce
a revolt against itself. The essence of greatness is unconventionality,
and restlessness is now becoming conventional. In education, in art,
in literature, in politics, in social life, we lose ourselves in
denunciations of the dreamer and the loafer. We cannot bear to see a
slowly-moving, deliberate, self-contained spirit, advancing quietly on
its discerned path. Instead of being content to perform faithfully and
conscientiously our allotted task, which is the way in which we can best
help the world, we demand that every one should want to do good, to
be responsible for some one else, to exhort, urge, beckon, restrain,
manage. That is all utterly false and hectic. Our aim should be patience
rather than effectiveness, sincerity rather than adaptability, to learn
rather than to teach, to ponder rather than to persuade, to know the
truth rather than to create illusion, however comforting, however
delightful such illusion may be.

VIII. SHYNESS

I have no doubt that shyness is one of the old, primitive, aboriginal
qualities that lurk in human nature--one of the crude elements that
ought to have been uprooted by civilisation, and security, and progress,
and enlightened ideals, but which have not been uprooted, and are only
being slowly eliminated. It is seen, as all aboriginal qualities are
seen