er I had to tell him that Shakespeare had
reached higher heights of thought and feeling than any modern, though I
was probably wrong in saying that I knew him better than I knew a living
man.

I had to go back to England and some little time elapsed before I could
return to Paris; but I crossed again early in the summer, and found he
had written nothing.

I often talked with him about it; but now he changed his ground a
little.

"I can't write, Frank. When I take up my pen all the past comes back: I
cannot bear the thoughts ... regret and remorse, like twin dogs, wait to
seize me at any idle moment. I must go out and watch life, amuse,
interest myself, or I should go mad. You don't know how sore it is about
my heart, as soon as I am alone. I am face to face with my own soul; the
Oscar of four years ago, with his beautiful secure life, and his
glorious easy triumphs, comes up before me, and I cannot stand the
contrast.... My eyes burn with tears. If you care for me, Frank, you
will not ask me to write."

"You promised to try," I said somewhat harshly, "and I want you to try.
You haven't suffered more than Dante suffered in exile and poverty; yet
you know if he had suffered ten times as much, he would have written it
all down. Tears, indeed! the fire in his eyes would have dried the
tears."

"True enough, Frank, but Dante was all of one piece whereas I am drawn
in two different directions. I was born to sing the joy and pride of
life, the pleasure of living, the delight in everything beautiful in
this most beautiful world, and they took me and tortured me till I
learned pity and sorrow. Now I cannot sing the joy, heartily, because I
know the suffering, and I was never made to sing of suffering. I hate
it, and I want to sing the love songs of joy and pleasure. It is joy
alone which appeals to my soul; the joy of life and beauty and love--I
could sing the song of Apollo the Sun-God, and they try to force me to
sing the song of the tortured Marsyas."

This to me was his true and final confession. His second fall after
leaving prison had put him "at war with himself." This is, I think, the
very heart of truth about his soul; the song of sorrow, of pity and
renunciation was not his song, and the experience of suffering prevented
him from singing the delight of life and the joy he took in beauty. It
never seemed to occur to him that he could reach a faith which should
include both self-indulgence and renunciation in a l