A bird in the air had already whispered the matter of your
literary venture, and I neither had nor have any doubt at all that
the publisher knew very well what he was about. The book will be
bright in real knowledge of the world; rich in points of life;
sympathetic with human nature, which in strength and weakness is
never petty or small.

Be sure to TRUST YOURSELF; and don't worry about critics. You need
no words to tell you how warmly I am interested in your great
design. PERSEVERE.

How kind to bid me to your royal [Footnote: I invited him to meet
the Prince of Wales.] meal. But I am too old for company that
would be so new, so don't take it amiss, my best of friends, if I
ask to be bidden when I should see more of YOU. You don't know how
dull a man, once lively, can degenerate into being.

Your always affectionate and grateful

J. MORLEY.

To return to my triumphant youth: I will end this chapter with a
note which my friend, Lady Frances Balfour--one of the few women
of outstanding intellect that I have known--sent me from her
father, the late Duke of Argyll, the wonderful orator of whom it
was said that he was like a cannon being fired off by a canary.

Frances asked me to meet him at a small dinner and placed me next
to him. In the course of our conversation, he quoted these words
that he had heard in a sermon preached by Dr. Caird: