One can make friends
through one's books with people with whom one agrees in spirit, but
whose bodily presence, modes of life, reticences, habits, would
erect a barrier to social intercourse. It is so much easier to love
and understand people through their books than through their
conversation. In books they put down their best, truest, most
deliberate thoughts; in talk, they are at the mercy of a thousand
accidents and sensations. There were people who objected to the
publication of the Browning love-letters. To me they were the
sacred and beautiful record of an intensely holy and passionate
relation between two great souls; and I can afford to disregard and
to contemn the people who thought the book strained, unconventional
and shameless, for the sake of those whose faith in love and beauty
was richly and generously nurtured by it.
It seems to me that the whole progress of life and thought, of love
and charity, depends upon our coming to understand each other. The
hostile seclusion which some desire is really a savage and almost
animal inheritance; and the best part of civilisation has sprung
from the generous self-revelation of kindly and honourable souls.
I am not even deterred, in a case of this kind, by wondering
whether the person concerned would have liked or disliked the
publication of these letters.
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