And again: 

“There are a great number of conventional ideas which are largely current, not only conversationally and among ordinary people, but in books—­good and sensible books, written by people of experience—­which are, in my opinion, radically and absolutely false, and yet no one takes the trouble to question them.  I am always coming across them.  Such as this:  No one is more incapable of affection than a profligate. This, in my judgement, is a ludicrous error, though it is the statement of no less a moral physician than Lacordaire.  If by affection you mean ’sustained, pure, disinterested emotion,’ such as patriotism—­well and good; but affection!—­the two most affectionate persons I have ever known were thoroughly dissolute; and I mean by affection, not a slobbering sentimental passion of a purely sensual type, but an affection quite untainted, to all appearances leading them to make considerable sacrifices for the sake of it, and causing them the acutest misery when not reciprocated.  In so far as profligates are selfish brutal natures, as they often are, it is true; but that is not the case with half of them.  They are not unfrequently people of infirm will, strong affections, and a violent animal nature.  It is selfishness, regard to personal comfort at all hazards, which is the hopeless nature, and can not be raised except through pain.

“Speaking of Lacordaire, another favourite position of his will illustrate my point.  He was constantly inveighing in his seminary against desultory reading.  Homer, Plutarch, Racine, Bossuet, and a few other books, are all he wishes a man to have read.  He calls miscellaneous reading a subtle dissipation, a moral poison.

“It seems to me to depend entirely upon temperament.  Some natures are like mills, converting everything that comes in their way into grist; and in that case, no doubt, it is deleterious.  They are people of slow-revolving mind, to whom statements in books are of the nature of authorities.  Lacordaire was one, I think.

“But there are others who are like sieves; who want a constant passing of materials of all kinds over them to let a little fall through; people who draw from a huge jumble of miscellaneous facts, theories, and thoughts, a little sediment of truth of the precise size to suit them.  Such a person was Macaulay.

“I believe that interference does more harm than good.  If you thrust books upon a mind of the first type, the result is confusion and weariness.  If you deny them to the latter, all you get is poverty of ideas, and morbidity, and mawkishness.  I make a rule never to interfere with anybody’s reading.”

Four years passed.  I went during that time once to Tredennis—­in the summer, when I took my scanty holiday; for I was in a Government office where only six weeks were allowed.  Arthur was generally away in the summer.  He took Edward Bruce to several friends’ houses; to his own home in Hampshire, now for a long time in the hands of strangers.  He wanted to make him a real Englishman.  It was arranged that he should go to Cambridge in October.  He matriculated at Trinity, Arthur’s own college; and he was looking forward with great delight to the prospect.