I feel
"As some bold seer in a trance
Seeing all his own mischance."
Well, at least one may still be bold!
December 22, 1888.
Perhaps my trial comes to me that it may test my faith in art;
perhaps to show me that the artist's creed is a false and shallow
one after all. What is it that we artists do? In a happy hour I
should have said glibly that we discern and interpret beauty. But
now it seems to me that no man can ever live upon beauty. I think I
have gone wrong in busying myself so ardently in trying to discern
the quality of beauty in all things. I seem to have submitted
everything--virtue, honour, life itself--to that test. I appear to
myself like an artist who has devoted himself entirely to the
appreciation of colour, who is suddenly struck colour-blind; he
sees the forms of things as clearly as ever, but they are dreary
and meaningless. I seem to have tried everything, even conduct, by
an artistic standard, and the quality which I have devoted myself
to discerning has passed suddenly out of life. And my mistake has
been all the more grievous, because I have always believed that it
was life of which I was in search. There are three great writers--
two of them artists as well--whose personality has always
interested me profoundly--Ruskin, Carlyle, Rossetti.
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