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The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft-Part16_George Gissing(1857-1903)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

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could have brought what seemed to me abundant evidence in its

disproof. And as regards myself, is it not by mere happy accident



that I pass my latter years in such enjoyment of all I most desired?

Accident--but there is no such thing. I might just as well have



called it an accident had I succeeded in earning the money on which

now I live.



From the beginning of my manhood, it is true, I longed for bookish

leisure; that, assuredly, is seldom even one of the desires in a



young man's heart, but perhaps it is one of those which may most

reasonably look for gratification later on. What, however, of the



multitudes who aim only at wealth, for the power and the pride and

the material pleasures which it represents? We know very well that



few indeed are successful in that aim; and, missing it, do they not

miss everything? For them, are not Goethe's words mere mockery?



Apply them to mankind at large, and perhaps, after all, they are

true. The fact of national prosperity and contentment implies,



necessarily, the prosperity and contentment of the greater number of

the individuals of which the nation consists. In other words, the



average man who is past middle life has obtained what he strove for-

-success in his calling. As a young man, he would not, perhaps,



have set forth his aspirations so moderately, but do they not, as a

fact, amount to this? In defence of the optimistic view, one may



urge how rare it is to meet with an elderly man who harbours a

repining spirit. True; but I have always regarded as a fact of



infinite pathos the ability men have to subdue themselves to the

conditions of life. Contentment so often means resignation,



abandonment of the hope seen to be forbidden.

I cannot resolve this doubt.



VIII

I have been reading Sainte-Beuve's Port Royal, a book I have often



thought of reading, but its length, and my slight interest in that

period, always held me aloof. Happily, chance and mood came



together, and I am richer by a bit of knowledge well worth

acquiring. It is the kind of book which, one may reasonably say,



tends to edification. One is better for having lived a while with

"Messieurs de Port-Royal"; the best of them were, surely, not far



from the Kingdom of Heaven.

Theirs is not, indeed, the Christianity of the first age; we are



among theologians, and the shadow of dogma has dimmed those divine

hues of the early morning, yet ever and anon there comes a cool,



sweet air, which seems not to have blown across man's common world,

which bears no taint of mortality.



A gallery of impressive and touching portraits. The great-souled M.

de Saint-Cyran, with his vision of Christ restored; M. Le Maitre,



who, at the summit of a brilliantcareer, turned from the world to

meditation and penitence; Pascal, with his genius and his triumphs,



his conflicts of soul and fleshly martyrdom; Lancelot, the good

Lancelot, ideal schoolmaster, who wrote grammar and edited classical



books; the vigorous Arnauld, doctoral rather than saintly, but long-

suffering for the faith that was in him; and all the smaller names--



Walon de Beaupuis, Nicole, Hamon--spirits of exquisitehumility and

sweetness--a perfume rises from the page as one reads about them.



But best of all I like M. de Tillemont; I could have wished for

myself even such a life as his; wrapped in silence and calm, a life



of gentle devotion and zealous study. From the age of fourteen, he

said, his intellect had occupied itself with but one subject, that



of ecclesiastical history. Rising at four o'clock, he read and

wrote until half-past nine in the evening, interrupting his work



only to say the Offices of the Church, and for a couple of hours'




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