treated with a certain respect. Where my ambition comes in is in
the desire not to fall below my standard. I suppose that while I
feel that I do not rate the judgment of the ordinary critic highly,
I have an instinctive sense that my work is worthy of his
admiration. The pain I feel is the sort of pain that an athlete
feels who has established, say, a record in high-jumping, and finds
that he can no longer hurl his stiffening legs and portly frame
over the lath. Well, I have always held strongly that men ought to
know when to stop. There is nothing more melancholy and
contemptible than to see a successful man, who has brought out a
brood of fine things, sitting meekly on addled eggs, or, still
worse, squatting complacently among eggshells. It is like the story
of the old tiresome Breton farmer whose wife was so annoyed by his
ineffective fussiness, that she clapt him down to sit on a clutch
of stone eggs for the rest of his life. How often have I thought
how deplorable it was to see a man issuing a series of books, every
one of which is feebler than its predecessor, dishing up the old
characters, the stale ideas, the used-up backgrounds. I have always
hoped that some one would be kind and brave enough to tell me when
I did that. But now that the end seems to have come to me naturally
and spontaneously, I cannot accept my defeat. I am like the monkey
of whom Frank Buckland wrote, who got into the kettle when the
water was lukewarm, and found the outer air so cold whenever he
attempted to leave it, that he was eventually very nearly boiled
alive. The fact that my occupation is gone leaves life hollow to
the core. Perhaps a wise man would content himself with composing
some placid literary essays, selecting some lesser figure in the
world of letters, collecting gossip, and what are called "side-
lights," about him, visiting his birthplace and early haunts,
criticising his writings. That would be a harmless way of filling