It was indeed a picture of wonderful prosperity, happiness, and delight.  The children were engaging, clever, and devotedly affectionate, and indeed the atmosphere of mutual affection seemed to float over the circle like a fresh and scented summer air.  One used to feel, as one drove away, that though one’s visit had been a pleasure, there would be none of the flatness which sometimes follows the departure of a guest, but that one was leaving them to a home life that was better than sociability, a life that was both sacred and beautiful, full to the brim of affection, yet without any softness or sentimentality.

Then came my friend’s great success.  He had written less since his marriage, and his books, I thought, were beginning to flag a little.  There was a want of freshness about them; he tended to use the same characters and similar situations; both thought and phraseology became somewhat mannerised.  I put this down myself to the belief that life was beginning to be more interesting to him than art.  But there suddenly appeared the book which made him famous, a book both masterly and delicate, full of subtle analysis and perception, and with that indescribable sense of actuality which is the best test of art.  The style at the same time seemed to have run clear; he had gained a perfect command of his instrument, and I had about this book, what I had never had about any other book of his, the sense that he was producing exactly the effects he meant to produce.  The extraordinary merit of the book was instantly recognised by all, I think, but the author.  He went abroad for a time after the book was published, and eventually returned; it was at that point of his life that the Diary began.

I went to see him not long after, and it became rapidly clear to me that something had happened to him.  Instead of being radiant with success, eager and contented, I found him depressed, anxious, haggard.  He told me that he felt unstrung and exhausted, and that his power of writing had deserted him.  But I must bear testimony at the same time to the fact which does not emerge in the Diary, namely, the extraordinary gallantry and patience of his conduct and demeanour.  He struggled visibly and pathetically, from hour to hour, against his depression.  He never complained; he never showed, at least in my presence, the smallest touch of irritability.  Indeed to myself, who had known him as the most equable and good-humoured of men, he seemed to support the trial with a courage little short of heroism.  The trial was a sore one, because it deprived him both of motive and occupation.  But he made the best of it; he read, he took long walks, and he threw himself with great eagerness into the education of his children—­a task for which he was peculiarly qualified.  Then a series of calamities fell upon him:  he lost his boy, a child of wonderful ability and sweetness; he lost his fortune, or the greater part of it.  The latter calamity he bore with perfect imperturbability—­they