Page:Twilight Hours (1868).djvu/25

"I don't know how the good people do who are always lowly- minded ; for me, when I am humble, I am detestable, fit only to growl in a hole like an Adullamite bear. I was just longing for some moral caustic to apply to set me right, when, after the bountiful fashion of Heaven, came instead the sweet and whole- some manna of encouragement." ***** " I cannot criticise this work. It is a great pity that it is so unfinished. A pity that is, for art's sake ; the public would simply gape at it. So far as regards the author, I don't know, but it is work over which a soul is likely to reel or to harden — only Milton's blindness saved him from either or both, if indeed he was saved. Alas ! deep down in my heart lies the doubt whether any such work is right, whether it may not come under the anathema at the end of the Revelation, on those who 'add to the words of the Book.' I think the writer would be held innocent, the work condemned, as God so often seems to take our sins out of us against our will. This I give most doubt- fully; I may transgress it myself to-morrow. There is an in- dividual law for every artist — to his own Master he standeth or falleth. If any of the Bible outlines call for filling in, it is certainly that of the Betrayer. The magnanimity of the Master seems to have held back the abhorrence of his disciples, or that abhorrence is so deep that we get no view of the traitor that would in a story justify — in the sense of lead to — his deed. In a fiction, speaking reverently, Judas would be daringly improbable by the rudest canons. This writer has made of him a character dramatically true as Milton's Satan is dramatically true ; but both are, in my conviction, morally false." ***** " I am afraid the author of would not approve of my criticisms. Novices are always Draconian, you know, and my first impulse would be to pitch the whole thing into the fire ; my