“It’s the wrong sort of literature,” said Father Payne.  “There isn’t time, or there ought not to be, to go fumbling about with these old scraps.  They aren’t good enough to publish—­and what’s more, if the man didn’t publish them himself, you may be sure he had very good reasons for not doing so.  The only interest of them is that so good a poet could write such drivel, and that he knew it was drivel sufficiently well not to publish it.  But the man who can edit it doesn’t know that, and the critics who review it don’t know it either—­it was a respectful review that made me buy the rubbish—­and as for the people who read it, God alone knows what they think of it.  It’s a case of

  “’Weave a circle round him thrice,
  And close your eyes in holy dread.’

“You have to shut your eyes pretty tight not to see what bosh it all is—­it is all this infernal reverence paid by people, who have no independence of judgment, to great reputations.  It reminds me of the barber who used to cut the Duke of Wellington’s hair and nails, who made quite a lot of money by selling clippings to put in lockets!”

“But isn’t it worth while to see a great poet’s inferior jottings, and to grasp how he worked?” said I.

“No,” said Father Payne;—­“at least it would be worth while to see how he brought off his good strokes, but it isn’t worth while seeing how he missed his stroke altogether.  This deification business is all unwholesome.  In art, in life, in religion, in literature, it’s a mistake to worship the saints—­you don’t make them divine, you only confuse things, and bring down the divine to your own level.  The truth—­the truth—­why can’t people see how splendid it is, and that it is one’s only chance of getting on!  To shut your eyes to the possibility of the great man having a touch of the commonplace, a touch of the ass, even a touch of the knave in him, doesn’t ennoble your conception of human nature.  If you can only glorify humanity by telling lies about it, and by ruling out all the flaws in it, you end by being a sentimentalist.  “See thou do it not ... worship God!” that’s one of the finest things in the Bible.  Of course it is magnificent to see a streak of the divine turning up again and again in human nature—­but you have got to wash the dirt to find the diamond.  Believe in the beauty behind and in and beyond us all—­but don’t worship the imperfect thing.  This sort of book is like selling the dirt out of which the diamonds have been washed, and which would appear to have gained holiness by contact.  I hate to see people stopping short on the symbol and the illustration, instead of passing on to the truth behind—­it’s idolatry.  It’s one degree better than worshipping nothing; but the danger of idolatry is that you are content to get no further:  and that is what makes idolatry so ingenious a device of the devil, that it persuades people to stop still and not to get on.”

“But aren’t you making too much out of it?” I said.  “At the worst, this is a harmless literary blunder, a foolish bit of hero-worship?”