I feel no sort of doubt that, as far
as I am concerned, she would be only too willing that I should thus
have read and loved them, and I cannot believe that the
disapprobation of a few austere people, or the curiosity of a few
vulgar people, would weigh in the balance for a moment against the
joy of like-minded spirits.
The worst dissatisfaction of life is the difficulty one has in
drawing near to others, the foolish hardness, often only
superficial, which makes one hold back from and repudiate
intimacies. If I had known and loved a great and worthy spirit, and
had been the recipient of his confidences, I should hold it a
solemn duty to tell the world what I knew. I should care nothing
for the carping of the cold and unsympathetic, but I should base my
decision on the approval of all loving and generous souls. This
seems to me the highest service that art can render, and if it be
said that no question of art comes in, in the publication of such
records as these letters, I would reply that they are themselves
works of the highest and most instinctive art, because the world,
its relations and affections, its loss and grief, its pain and
suffering, are here seen patiently mirrored and perfectly expressed
by a most perceptive personality.
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