The Upton Letters eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 268 pages of information about The Upton Letters.

The Upton Letters eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 268 pages of information about The Upton Letters.

In the course of the sermon the preacher quoted some lines of Omar Khayyam in order to illustrate the shamefulness of the indolent life.  That is a very dangerous thing to do.  The lovely stanzas, sweet as honey, flowed out upon the air in all their stately charm.  The old sinner stole my heart away with his gentle, seductive, Epicurean grace.  I am afraid that I felt like Paolo as he sate beside Francesca.  I heard no more of the sermon that day; I repeated to myself many of the incomparable quatrains, and felt the poem to be the most beautiful presentment of pure Agnosticism that has ever been given to the world.  The worst of it is that the delicate traitor makes it so beautiful that one does not feel the shame and the futility of it.

This evening I have been reading the new life of FitzGerald, so you may guess what was the result of the sermon for me.  It is not a wholly pleasing book, but it is an interesting one; it gives a better picture of the man than any other book or article, simply by the great minuteness with which it enters into details.  And now I find myself confronted by the problem in another shape.  Was FitzGerald’s life an unworthy one?  He had great literary ambitions, but he made nothing of them.  He lived a very pure, innocent, secluded life, delighting in nature and in the company of simple people; loving his friends with a passion that reminds one of Newman; doing endless little kindnesses to all who came within his circle; and tenderly loved by several great-hearted men of genius.  He felt himself that he was to blame; he urged others to the activities which he could not practise.  And yet the results of his life are such as many other more busy, more conscientious men have not achieved.  He has left a large body of good literary work, and one immortal poem of incomparable beauty.  He also left, quite unconsciously, I believe, many of the most beautiful, tender, humorous, wise letters in the English tongue; and I find myself wondering whether all this could have been brought to pass in any other way.

Yet I could not conscientiously advise any one to take FitzGerald’s life as a model It was shabby, undecided, futile; he did many silly, almost fatuous things; he was deplorably idle and unstrung.  At the same time a terrible suspicion creeps upon me that many busy men are living worse lives.  I don’t mean men who give themselves to activities, however dusty, which affect other people.  I will grant at once that doctors, teachers, clergymen, philanthropists, even Members of Parliament are justified in their lives; then, too, men who do the necessary work of the world—­farmers, labourers, workmen, fishermen, are justifiable.  But business men who make fortunes for their children; lawyers, artists, writers, who work for money and for praise—­are these after all so much nobler than our indolent friend?  To begin with, FitzGerald’s life was one of extraordinary simplicity.  He lived on almost nothing, he had no luxuries; he was like a lily of the field.  If he had been a merely selfish man it would have been different; but he loved his fellow-men deeply and tenderly, and he showered unobtrusive kindness on all round him.

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The Upton Letters from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.