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The Upton Letters, a non-fiction book by Arthur C. Benson |
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Ashfield, Settle, Sept. 4, 1904 |
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_ DEAR HERBERT,--I have been reading FitzGerald's pretty essay Euphranor. It is Platonic both in form and treatment, but I never feel that it is wholly successful. Most of the people who express admiration for it know nothing of the essay except a delicious passage at the end, like a draught of fragrant wine, about the gowned figures evaporating into the twilight, and the nightingale heard among the flowering chestnuts of Jesus. But the talk itself is discursive and somewhat pompous. However, it is not of that that I wish to speak, it is rather of the passage from Digby's Godefridus which is read aloud by the narrator, which sets out to analyse the joyful and generous temperament of Youth. "They [the young] are easily put to Shame" (so runs the script), "for they have no resources to set aside the precepts which they have learned; and they have lofty souls, for they have never been disgraced or brought low, and they are unacquainted with Necessity; they prefer Honour to Advantage, Virtue to Expediency; for they live by Affection rather than by Reason, and Reason is concerned with Expediency, but Affection with Honour." All very beautiful and noble, no doubt; but is it real? was I, were you, creatures of this make? Could these fine things have been truthfully said of us? Perhaps you may think it of yourself, but I can only regretfully say that I do not recognise it. My boyhood and youth were, it seems to me, very faulty things. My age is faulty still, more's the pity. But without any vain conceit, and with all the humility which is given by a knowledge of weakness, I can honestly say that in particular points I have improved a little. I am not generous or noble-hearted now; but I have not lost these qualities, for I never had them. As a boy and a young man I distinctly preferred Advantage to Honour; I was the prey of Expediency, and seldom gave Virtue a thought. But since I have known more of men, I have come to know that these fine powers, Honour and Virtue, do bloom in some men's souls, and in the hearts of many women. I have perceived their fragrance; I have seen Honour raise its glowing face like a rose, and Virtue droop its head like a pure snowdrop; and I hope that some day, as in an early day of spring, I may find some such tender green thing budding in the ugly soil of my own poor spirit. Life would be a feeble business if it were otherwise; but the one ray of hope is not that one steadily declines in brightness from those early days, but that one may learn by admiration the beauty of the great qualities one never had by instinct. I see myself as a boy, greedy, mean-spirited, selfish, dull. I see myself as a young man, vain, irritable, self-absorbed, unbalanced. I have not eradicated these weeds; but I have learnt to believe in beauty and honour, even in Truth. . . .--Ever yours, T. B. _ |
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