do so more than once, but that its
genius would in the long run be aristocratic and lonely. Whenever I had
known some old countryman, I had heard stories and sayings that arose
out of an imagination that would have understood Homer better than _The
Cotter's Saturday Night_ or _Highland Mary_, because it was an ancient
imagination, where the sediment had found the time to settle, and I
believe that the makers of deliberate literature could still take
passion and theme, though but little thought, from such as he. On some
such old and broken stem, I thought, have all the most beautiful roses
been grafted.

II

Him who trembles before the flame and the flood,
And the winds that blow through the starry ways;
Let the starry winds and the flame and the flood
Cover over and hide, for he has no part
With the proud, majestical multitude.

Three types of men have made all beautiful things. Aristocracies have
made beautiful manners, because their place in the world puts them above
the fear of life, and the countrymen have made beautiful stories and
beliefs, because they have nothing to lose and so do not fear, and the
artists have made all the rest, because Providence has filled them with
recklessness. All these look backward to a long tradition, for, being
without fear, they have held to whatever pleased them. The others being
always anxious have come to possess little that is good in itself, and
are always changing from thing to thing, for whatever they do or have
must be a means to something else, and they have so little belief that
anything can be an end in itself, that they cannot understand you if
you say, 'All the most valuable things are useless.' They prefer the
stalk to the flower, and believe that painting and poetry exist that
there may be instruction, and love that there may be children, and
theatres that busy men may rest, and holidays that busy men may go on
being busy. At all times they fear and even hate the things that have
worth in themselves, for that worth may suddenly, as it were a fire,
consume their book of Life, where the world is represented by cyphers
and symbols; and before all else, they fear irreverent joy and
unserviceable sorrow. It seems to them, that those who have been freed
by position, by poverty, or by the traditions of Art, have something
terrible about them, a light that is unendurable to eyesight. They
complain much of that commandment that we can do almost what we will, if