CHAPTER VIII

Arthur Hamilton as an author


I must give a chapter to this subject, because it entered very
largely into Arthur's life, although he was singularly unsuccessful
as an author, considering the high level of his mental powers.

He lacked somehow, not exactly the gift of expression—his letters
testify to that—but the gift of proportion and combination.

His essays are disjointed—discursive and eloquent in parts, and bare
and meagre in others. Connections are omitted, passages of real and
rare beauty jostling with long passages of the most common-place
rhetoric. His platitudes, however, to myself who knew him, have a
genuine ring about them; he never admitted a truism into his writing
till it had become his own by vivid realization. As he himself says:

"I always find a peculiar interest in the solemn enunciation of a
platitude by a dull person who does not naturally aim at effect.
You feel sure it is the condensation of life and experience. Such
an utterance often brings a platitude home to me as no amount of
rhetorical writing can."

Still, the reading public will not stand this, and Arthur never found
a market.