I myself hold to be lovable I am satisfied; art is only interesting
in so far as it reveals the personality of the artist." Handel was,
of course, "the greatest of all musicians." Among the painters he
chiefly loved Giovanni Bellini, Carpaccio, Gaudenzio Ferrari,
Rembrandt, Holbein, Velasquez, and De Hooghe; in poetry Shakespeare,
Homer, and the Authoress of the 'Odyssey'; and in architecture the
man, whoever he was, who designed the Temple of Neptune at Paestum.
Life being short, he did not see why he should waste any of it in the
company of inferior people when he had these. And he treated those
he met in daily life in the same spirit: it was what he found them
to be that attracted or repelled him; what others thought about them
was of little or no consequence.

And now, at the end of his life, his thoughts reverted to the two
subjects which had occupied him more than thirty years previously--
namely, 'Erewhon' and the evidence for the death and resurrection of
Jesus Christ. The idea of what might follow from belief in one
single supposed miracle had been slumbering during all those years
and at last rose again in the form of a sequel to 'Erewhon'. In
'Erewhon Revisited' Mr. Higgs returns to find that the Erewhonians
now believe in him as a god in consequence of the supposed miracle of
his going up in a balloon to induce his heavenly father to send the
rain. Mr. Higgs and the reader know that there was no miracle in the
case, but Butler wanted to show that whether it was a miracle or not
did not signify provided that the people believed it be one. And so
Mr. Higgs is present in the temple which is being dedicated to him
and his worship.

The existence of his son George was an afterthought and gave occasion
for the second leading idea of the book--the story of a father trying