When I look at the articles on Handel, on Dr. Arnold, or indeed on almost any one whom I know anything about, I feel that such a work as the Dictionary of National Biography adds more terror to death than death of itself could inspire. That is one reason why I let myself go so unreservedly in these notes. If the colours in which I paint myself fail to please, at any rate I shall have had the laying them on myself.

The World

The world will, in the end, follow only those who have despised as well as served it.

Acc.u.mulated Dinners

The world and all that has ever been in it will one day be as much forgotten as what we ate for dinner forty years ago. Very likely, but the fact that we shall not remember much about a dinner forty years hence does not make it less agreeable now, and after all it is only the acc.u.mulation of these forgotten dinners that makes the dinner of forty years hence possible.

Judging the Dead

The dead should be judged as we judge criminals, impartially, but they should be allowed the benefit of a doubt. When no doubt exists they should be hanged out of hand for about a hundred years. After that time they may come down and move about under a cloud. After about 2000 years they may do what they like. If Nero murdered his mother--well, he murdered his mother and there's an end. The moral guilt of an action varies inversely as the squares of its distances in time and s.p.a.ce, social, psychological, physiological or topographical, from ourselves. Not so its moral merit: this loses no l.u.s.tre through time and distance.

Good is like gold, it will not rust or tarnish and it is rare, but there is some of it everywhere. Evil is like water, it abounds, is cheap, soon fouls, but runs itself clear of taint.

Myself and My Books

Bodily offspring I do not leave, but mental offspring I do. Well, my books do not have to be sent to school and college and then insist on going into the Church or take to drinking or marry their mother's maid.

My Son

I have often told my son that he must begin by finding me a wife to become his mother who shall satisfy both himself and me. But this is only one of the many rocks on which we have hitherto split. We should never have got on together; I should have had to cut him off with a shilling either for laughing at Homer, or for refusing to laugh at him, or both, or neither, but still cut him off. So I settled the matter long ago by turning a deaf ear to his importunities and sticking to it that I would not get him at all.

Yet his thin ghost visits me at times and, though he knows that it is no use pestering me further, he looks at me so wistfully and reproachfully that I am half-inclined to turn tall, take my chance about his mother and ask him to let me get him after all. But I should show a clean pair of heels if he said "Yes."

Besides, he would probably be a girl.

Obscurity

When I am dead, do not let people say of me that I suffered from misrepresentation and neglect. I was neglected and misrepresented; very likely not half as much as I supposed but, nevertheless, to some extent neglected and misrepresented. I growl at this sometimes but, if the question were seriously put to me whether I would go on as I am or become famous in my own lifetime, I have no hesitation about which I should prefer. I will willingly pay the few hundreds of pounds which the neglect of my works costs me in order to be let alone and not plagued by the people who would come round me if I were known. The probability is that I shall remain after my death as obscure as I am now; if this be so, the obscurity will, no doubt, be merited, and if not, my books will work not only as well without my having been known in my lifetime but a great deal better; my follies and blunders will the better escape notice to the enhancing of the value of anything that may be found in my books. The only two things I should greatly care about if I had more money are a few more country outings and a little more varied and better cooked food.

[1882.]

P.S.--I have long since obtained everything that a reasonable man can wish for. [1895.]

Posthumous Honours

I see Cecil Rhodes has just been saying that he was a lucky man, inasmuch as such honours as are now being paid him generally come to a man after his death and not before it. This is all very well for a politician whose profession immerses him in public life, but the older I grow the more satisfied I am that there can be no greater misfortune for a man of letters or of contemplation than to be recognised in his own lifetime. Fortunately the greater man he is, and hence the greater the misfortune he would incur, the less likelihood there is that he will incur it. [1897.]

Posthumous Recognition

Shall I be remembered after death? I sometimes think and hope so.

But I trust I may not be found out (if I ever am found out, and if I ought to be found out at all) before my death. It would bother me very much and I should be much happier and better as I am. [1880.]

P.S.--This note I leave unaltered. I am glad to see that I had so much sense thirteen years ago. What I thought then, I think now, only with greater confidence and confirmation. [1893.]

a.n.a.lysis of the Sales of My Books

Copies Cash Cash Total Total Value of Sold Profit Loss Profit loss stock Erewhon 3843 62 10 10 -- 69 3 10 -- 6 13 0 The Fair 442 -- 41 2 2 -- 27 18 2 13 4 0 Haven Life and 640 -- 4 17 1.5 7 19 1.5 -- 12 16 3 Habit Evolution 541 -- 103 11 10 -- 89 13 10 13 18 0 Old & New Unconscious 272 -- 38 13 5 -- 38 13 5 - Memory Alps and 332 -- 113 6 4 -- 110 18 4 22 8 0 Sanctuaries Selections 120 -- 51 4 10.5 -- 48 10 10.5 2 14 0 from Previous Works Luck or 284 -- 41 6 4 -- 13 18 10 27 7 6 Cunning?

Ex Voto 217 -- 147 18 0 -- 111 8 0 36 10 0 Life and 201 -- 216 18 0 -- 193 18 0 23 0 0 Letters of Dr. Butler The 165 -- 81 1 3 -- 59 10 3 21 11 0 Auth.o.r.ess of the Odyssey The Iliad 157 -- 89 4 8 -- 77 6 8 11 18 0 in English Prose A Holbein 6 -- 8 1 9 -- 8 1 9 - Card A Book of 0 -- 3 11 9 -- -- 3 11 9 Essays

Totals: Cash profit: 62 10 10 Cash loss: 960 17 6 Total profit: 77 2 11.5 Total loss: 779 18 1.5 Value of stock: 195 11 6

To this must be added my book on the Sonnets in respect of which I have had no account as yet but am over a hundred pounds out of pocket by it so far--little of which, I fear, is ever likely to come back.

It will be noted that my public appears to be a declining one; I attribute this to the long course of practical boycott to which I have been subjected for so many years, or, if not boycott, of sneer, snarl and misrepresentation. I cannot help it, nor if the truth were known, am I at any pains to try to do so. {369}

Worth Doing

If I deserve to be remembered, it will be not so much for anything I have written, or for any new way of looking at old facts which I may have suggested, as for having shown that a man of no special ability, with no literary connections, not particularly laborious, fairly, but not supremely, accurate as far as he goes, and not travelling far either for his facts or from them, may yet, by being perfectly square, sticking to his point, not letting his temper run away with him, and biding his time, be a match for the most powerful literary and scientific coterie that England has ever known.

I hope it may be said of me that I discomfited an unscrupulous, self- seeking clique, and set a more wholesome example myself. To have done this is the best of all discoveries.

Doubt and Hope

I will not say that the more than coldness with which my books are received does not frighten me and make me distrust myself. It must do so. But every now and then I meet with such support as gives me hope again. Still, I know nothing. [1890.]

Unburying Cities

Of course I am jealous of the eclat that Flinders Petrie, Layard and Schliemann get for having unburied cities, but I do not see why I need be; the great thing is to unbury the city, and I believe I have unburied Scheria as effectually as Schliemann unburied Troy. [The Auth.o.r.ess of the Odyssey.] True, Scheria was above ground all the time and only wanted a little common sense to find it; nevertheless people have had all the facts before them for over 2500 years and have been looking more or less all the time without finding. I do not see why it is more meritorious to uncover physically with a spade than spiritually with a little of the very commonest common sense.

Apologia

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