this one faculty; but it has outrun all the rest of me, and I am aware that it has drained the rest of my nature.  The curious thing is that this sort of fame is the thing that as a young man I used to covet.  I used to think it would be so sustaining and resplendent.  Now that it has come to me, in far richer measure, I will not say than I hoped, but at all events than I had expected, it does not seem to be a wholly desirable thing.  Fame is only one of the sauces of life; it is not the food of the spirit at all.  The people that praise one are like the courtiers that bow in the anterooms of a king, through whom he passes to the lonely study where his life is lived.  I am not feeling ungrateful or ungenerous; but I would give all that I have gained for a new and inspiring friendship, or for the certainty that I should write another book with the same happiness as I wrote my last book.  Perhaps I ought to feel the responsibility more!  I do feel it in a sense, but I have never estimated the moral effectiveness of a writer of fiction very high; one comforts rather than sustains; one diverts rather than feeds.  If I could hear of one self-sacrificing action, one generous deed, one tranquil surrender that had been the result of my book, I should be more pleased than I am with all the shower of compliments.  Of course in a sense praise makes life more interesting; but what I really desire to apprehend is the significance and meaning of life, that strange mixture of pain and pleasure, of commonplace events and raptures; and my book brings me no nearer that.  To feel God nearer me, to feel, not by evidence but by instinct, that there is a Heart that cares for me, and moulded me from the clay for a purpose—­why, I would give all that I have in the world for that!

Of course Maud will be pleased; but that will be because she believes that I deserve everything and anything, and is only surprised that the world has not found out sooner what a marvellous person I am.  God knows I do not undervalue her belief in me; but it makes and keeps me humble to feel how far she is from the truth, how far from realising the pitiful weakness and emptiness of her lover and husband.

Is this, I wonder, how all successful people feel about fame?  The greatest of all have often never enjoyed the least touch of it in their lifetime; and they are happier so.  Some few rich and generous natures, like Scott and Browning, have neither craved for it nor valued it.  Some of the greatest have desired it, slaved for it, clung to it.  Yet when it comes, one realises how small a part of life and thought it fills—­unless indeed it brings other desirable things with it; and this is not the case with me, because I have all I want.  Well, if I can but set to work at another book, all these idle thoughts will die away; but my mind rattles like a shrunken kernel.  I must kneel down and pray, as Blake and his wife did, when the visions deserted them.

September 25, 1888.