the one quality which, if it reaches a certain height, can altogether despise and triumph over fear.  When ambition and delight and energy fail, love can accompany us, with hope and confidence, to the dark gate; and thus it is the one thing about which we can hardly be mistaken.  If love does not survive death, then life is built upon nothingness, and we may be glad to get away; but it is more likely that it is the only thing that does survive.

XIX

SIN

It is every one’s duty to take himself seriously—­that is the right mean between taking oneself either solemnly or apologetically.  There is no merit in being apologetic about oneself.  One has a right to be there, wherever one is, a right to an opinion, a right to take some kind of a hand in whatever is going on; natural tact is the only thing which can tell us exactly how far those rights extend; but it is inconvenient to be apologetic, because if one insists on explaining how one comes to be there, or how one comes to have an opinion, other people begin to think that one needs explanation and excuse; but it is even worse to be solemn about oneself, because English people are very critical in private, though they are tolerant in public, because they dislike a scene, and have not got the art of administering the delicate snub which indicates to a man that his self-confidence is exuberant without humiliating him; when English people inflict a snub, they do it violently and emphatically, like Dr. Johnson, and it generally means that they are relieving themselves of accumulated disapproval.  An Englishman is apt to be deferential, and one of the worst temptations of official life is the temptation to be solemn.  There is an old story about Scott and Wordsworth, when the latter stayed at Abbotsford; Scott, during the whole visit, was full of little pleasant and courteous allusions to Wordsworth’s poems; and one of the guests present records how at the end of the visit not a single word had ever passed Wordsworth’s lips which could have indicated that he knew his host to have ever written a line of poetry or prose.

I was sitting the other day at a function next a man of some eminence, and I was really amazed at the way in which he discoursed of himself and his habits, his diet, his hours of work, and the blank indifference with which he received similar confidences.  He merely waited till the speaker had finished, and then resumed his own story.

It is this sort of solemn egotism which makes us overvalue our anxieties quite out of all proportion to their importance, because they all appear to us as integral elements of a dignified drama in which we enact the hero’s part.  We press far too heavily on the sense of responsibility; and if we begin by telling boys, as is too often done in sermons, that whatever they do or say is of far-reaching consequence, that every lightest word may produce an effect, that any carelessness of speech or example may have disastrous effects upon the character of another, we are doing our best to encourage the self-emphasis which is the very essence of priggishness.