He had once
described to a fellow-writer the impression produced on him by that
plaster face, so capaciously ugly, as though comprehending the whole
of human life, sharing all man's gluttony and lust, his violence and
rapacity, but sharing also his strivings toward love and reason and
serenity.
"He's telling us," said Hilary, "to drink deep, to dive down and live
with mermaids, to lie out on the hills under the sun, to sweat with
helots, to know all things and all men. No seat, he says, among the
Wise, unless we've been through it all before we climb! That's how he
strikes me--not too cheering for people of our sort!"
Under the shadow of this bust Hilary rested his forehead on his hand. In
front of him were three open books and a pile of manuscript, and
pushed to one side a little sheaf of pieces of green-white paper,
press-cuttings of his latest book.
The exact position occupied by his work in the life of such a man is not
too easy to define. He earned an income by it, but he was not dependent
on that income. As poet, critic, writer of essays, he had made himself
a certain name--not a great name, but enough to swear by. Whether his
fastidiousness could have stood the conditions of literary existence
without private means was now and then debated by his friends; it
could probably have done so better than was supposed, for he sometimes
startled those who set him down as a dilettante by a horny way of
retiring into his shell for the finish of a piece of work.
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