Some one, no doubt, hit upon this definition of mine long ago.  It doesn’t matter; is it the less original with me?  Not long since I should have fretted over the possibility, for my living depended on an avoidance of even seeming plagiarism.  Now I am at one with Lord Foppington, and much disposed to take pleasure in the natural sprouts of my own wit—­without troubling whether the same idea has occurred to others.  Suppose me, in total ignorance of Euclid, to have discovered even the simplest of his geometrical demonstrations, shall I be crestfallen when some one draws attention to the book?  These natural sprouts are, after all, the best products of our life; it is a mere accident that they may have no value in the world’s market.  One of my conscious efforts, in these days of freedom, is to live intellectually for myself.  Formerly, when in reading I came upon anything that impressed or delighted me, down it went in my note-book, for “use.”  I could not read a striking verse, or sentence of prose, without thinking of it as an apt quotation in something I might write—­one of the evil results of a literary life.  Now that I strive to repel this habit of thought, I find myself asking:  To what end, then, do I read and remember?  Surely as foolish a question as ever man put to himself.  You read for your own pleasure, for your solace and strengthening.  Pleasure, then, purely selfish?  Solace which endures for an hour, and strengthening for no combat?  Ay, but I know, I know.  With what heart should I live here in my cottage, waiting for life’s end, were it not for those hours of seeming idle reading?

I think sometimes, how good it were had I some one by me to listen when I am tempted to read a passage aloud.  Yes, but is there any mortal in the whole world upon whom I could invariably depend for sympathetic understanding?—­nay, who would even generally be at one with me in my appreciation.  Such harmony of intelligences is the rarest thing.  All through life we long for it:  the desire drives us, like a demon, into waste places; too often ends by plunging us into mud and morass.  And, after all, we learn that the vision was illusory.  To every man is it decreed:  thou shalt live alone.  Happy they who imagine that they have escaped the common lot; happy, whilst they imagine it.  Those to whom no such happiness has ever been granted at least avoid the bitterest of disillusions.  And is it not always good to face a truth, however discomfortable?  The mind which renounces, once and for ever, a futile hope, has its compensation in ever-growing calm.

XXI.

All about my garden to-day the birds are loud.  To say that the air is filled with their song gives no idea of the ceaseless piping, whistling, trilling, which at moments rings to heaven in a triumphant unison, a wild accord.  Now and then I notice one of the smaller songsters who seems to strain his throat in a madly joyous endeavour to out-carol all the rest.  It is a chorus of praise such as none other of earth’s children have the voice or the heart to utter.  As I listen, I am carried away by its glorious rapture; my being melts in the tenderness of an impassioned joy; my eyes are dim with I know not what profound humility.