all until he feels the need of observation. Then he observes, and
intensely. He does not analyse, he does not amass his facts; he
concentrates. He wrings out quintessences; and when he has distilled
his drops of pure spirit he brews his potion. Something of the kind
happens to me now, whether verse or prose be the Muse of my devotion.
A stray thought, a chance vision, moves me; presently the flame is
hissing hot. Everything then at any time observed and stored in the
memory which has relation to the fact is fused and in a swimming flux.
Anon, as the Children of Israel said to Moses, "There came forth
this calf." One cannot get any nearer, I believe; and while I do not
pretend that I have said all there is to say about anything here, I
shall maintain that I have said all that need be said about the things
which I touch upon. In an essay, as in a poem, the half is greater
than the whole, if it is the right half. If it is the wrong half, why,
then the shorter it is the better.

As most of these commentaries were written during the year which is
mercifully over, it would not have been possible, even if it had been
sought, to avoid current topics. Why should a writer shrink from being
called a journalist? He need not cease to be writer. But if he wishes
to be true to his original calling, to make his hope and election
sure, he must always be careful to seek the universal in the
particular; and that is where your idealist has such a pull, for he
can see nothing else. And if he does that he need not be afraid that
the conventions of Time and Space will be a hindrance to his book's
path. He will be readable a century hence; he will be readable in the
Antipodes; and that is as near infinity as any of us, short of Chaucer
and Shakespeare, need trouble about. In the country one reads, not
skims, the daily paper; and if one's comments are leisurely, perhaps
they are all the better. At any rate one is not tempted to see the end