| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Eryxias by Platonic Imitator: not unknown among the followers of Plato. The Eryxias was doubted by the
ancients themselves: yet it may claim the distinction of being, among all
Greek or Roman writings, the one which anticipates in the most striking
manner the modern science of political economy and gives an abstract form
to some of its principal doctrines.
For the translation of these two dialogues I am indebted to my friend and
secretary, Mr. Knight.
That the Dialogue which goes by the name of the Second Alcibiades is a
genuine writing of Plato will not be maintained by any modern critic, and
was hardly believed by the ancients themselves. The dialectic is poor and
weak. There is no power over language, or beauty of style; and there is a
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Tono Bungay by H. G. Wells: underlined and stamped home. I wished very much now that I had
run away to sea, in spite of the coal dust and squalour Rochester
had revealed to me. Perhaps over seas one came to different
lands.
IV
I do not remember much of my journey to Wimblehurst with my
mother except the image of her as sitting bolt upright, as rather
disdaining the third-class carriage in which we traveled, and
how she looked away from me out of the window when she spoke of
my uncle. "I have not seen your uncle," she said, "since he was
a boy...." She added grudgingly, "Then he was supposed to be
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Soul of the Far East by Percival Lowell: Portraits of people, pictures of places, he does not know, and yet
which purport to be his! And I venture to believe that to more than
one of us the exquisite pathos of the Bride of Lammermoor is gone
when Lucia warbles her woes, be it never so entrancingly, to an
admiring house. It almost seems as if the garish publicity of using
her name for operatic title were a special intervention of the Muse,
that we might the less connect song with story,--two sensations
that, like two lights, destroy one another by mutual interference.
Against this preference shown the sketch it may be urged that to
appreciate such suggestions presupposes as much art in the public as
in the painter. But the ability to appreciate a thing when
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