But what
he did mind was the persistent misinterpretation of his intention in
certain quarters where he thought he had the right to respectful
criticism in stead of the succession of sneers that greeted the
successive numbers of his story; and it was no secret that he felt the
persecution keenly. Perhaps he thought that he had already reached that
time in his literary life when he was a fact rather than a question, and
when reasons and not feelings must have to do with his acceptance or
rejection. But he had to live many years yet before he reached this
state. When he did reach it, happily a good while before his death, I do
not believe any man ever enjoyed the like condition more. He loved to
feel himself out of the fight, with much work before him still, but with
nothing that could provoke ill-will in his activities. He loved at all
times to take himself objectively, if I may so express my sense of a
mental attitude that misled many. As I have said before, he was
universally interested, and he studied the universe from himself. I do
not know how one is to study it otherwise; the impersonal has really no
existence; but with all his subtlety and depth he was of a make so
simple, of a spirit so naive, that he could not practise the feints some
use to conceal that interest in self which, after all, every one knows is
only concealed. He frankly and joyously made himself the starting-point
in all his inquest of the hearts and minds of other men, but so far from
singling himself out in this, and standing apart in it, there never was
any one who was more eagerly and gladly your fellow-being in the things
of the soul.
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