“What exquisite music there is in the lines of Swinburne’s in ‘A Swimmer’s Dream’ (in this month’s _New Review_).”
“_Jan. 3rd._—(1) Wrote chapter of _Ordeal of Basil Hope_. Finished it by 12.30. Then went to R. Academy Press-View and spent two hours or so in the Galleries. While walking back to Club from Charing Cross thought out some opening sentences for _Browning_, leading to the wave-theory, beginning—‘In human history, waves of intellectual activity concur with other dynamic movements. It used to be a formula of criticism, etc.’ (wrote down a couple of Pages at Club). ‘Death is a variation, a note of lower or higher insistence in the rhythmical sequence of Life.’”—W. S.
“_Jan. 4th._—(1) Wrote article of 2,500 words upon Balzac (for _The Scottish Leader_). (2) Short ‘London Correspondence’ for _G. H._ The profoundest insight cannot reach deeper than its own possibilities of depth. The physiognomy of the soul is never visible in its entirety—barely ever even its profile. The utmost we can expect to produce (perhaps even to perceive, in the most quintessential moment), is a partially faithful, partially deceptive silhouette. Since no human being has ever yet seen his or her own soul, absolutely impartially and in all its rounded completeness of good and evil, of strength and weakness, of what is temporal and perishable and what is germinal and essential, how can we expect even the subtlest analyst to depict other souls than his own. Even in a savage there must be dormant possibilities, animal and spiritual traits of all kinds, which could to a deeper than any human vision (as we can conceive it) so colour and modify an abstract ‘replica’ as to make it altogether unlike the picture we should draw.”—W. S.
“_Jan. 5th._—The first thing the artist should cultivate if not strongly dowered in this respect by Nature, is Serenity. A true Serenity—what Wilfred Meynell, writing of Browning, in the _Athenæum_ of Friday, calls ‘detachment’—is one of the surest inspirers and preservatives of that clarified psychic emotion which, in compelled or propelled expressional activity, is the cause of all really creative work. This true serenity is, of course, as far removed from a false isolation of spirit or a contemptuous indifference, as from constant perturbation about trifles and vulgar anxiety for self.”—W. S.