he was familiar with the worst calamity of all, the causeless
melancholy which makes life weary and distasteful without ever
removing the certainty that it is in itself desirable.

We may see from all this that to attempt to seek a cure for fear in
reason is foredoomed to failure, because fear lies in a region that
is behind all reason. It exists in the depth of the spirit, as in
the fallen gloom of the glimmering sea-deeps, and it can be touched
by no activity of life and joy and sunlight on the surface, where
the speeding sail moves past wind-swept headlands. We must follow
it into those depths if we are to deal with it at all, and it must
be vanquished in the region where it is born, and where it skulks
unseen.






XII

TENNYSON, RUSKIN, CARLYLE





There were three great men of the nineteenth century of whom we know
more than we know of most men, Carlyle, Ruskin, and Tennyson, in
whose lives fear was a prominent element.