t the cosy
accompaniment of my days. For I shall contemplate the world.

I shall look forth from my window, the laburnum and the mountain-ash
becoming mere silhouettes in the foreground of my vision. I shall look
forth and, in nay remoteness, appreciate the distant pageant of the
world. Humanity will range itself in the columns of my morning paper. No
pulse of life will escape me. The strife of politics, the intriguing of
courts, the wreck of great vessels, wars, dramas, earthquakes,
national griefs or joys; the strange sequels to divorces, even, and the
mysterious suicides of land-agents at Ipswich--in all such phenomena I
shall steep my exhaurient mind. Delicias quoque bibliothecae experiar.
Tragedy, comedy, chivalry, philosophy will be mine. I shall listen to
their music perpetually and their colours will dance before my eyes. I
shall soar from terraces of stone upon dragons with shining wings
and make war upon Olympus. From the peaks of hills I shall swoop into
recondite valleys and drive the pigmies, shrieking little curses, to
their caverns. It may be my whim to wander through infinite parks where
the deer lie under the clustering shadow of their antlers and flee
lightly over the grass; to whisper with white prophets under the elms or
bind a child with a daisy-chain or, with a lady, thread my way through
the acacias. I shall swim down rivers into the sea and outstrip all
ships. Unhindered I shall penetrate all sanctuaries and snatch the
secrets of every dim confessional.

Yes! among books that charm, and give wings to the mind, will my days be
spent. I shall be ever absorbing the things great men have written; with
such experience I will charge my mind to the full. Nor will I try to
give anything in return. Once, in the delusion that Art, loving the
recluse, would make his life happy, I wrote a little for a yellow
quarterly and had that succes de fiasco which is always given to a young
writer of talent. But the stress of creation soon overwhelmed me. Only
Art with a capital H gives any consolations to her henchmen. And I, who
crave no knighthood, shall write no more. I shall write no more. Already
I feel myself to be a trifle outmoded. I belong to the Beardsley period.
Younger men, with months of activity before them, with fresher schemes
and notions, with newer enthusiasm, have pressed forward since then.
Cedo junioribus. Indeed, I stand aside with no regret. For to be
outmoded is to be a classic, if one has wri