with the higher forms of vitality. Even the leaves of the same tree
are said to differ, each one from all the rest. And can it be good
for the soul of a man "with a biography of his own like to no one
else's," to subject itself without thought to the opinions and ways
of others: not to grow into symmetry, but to be moulded down into
conformity?

----

Ellesmere. Well, I rather like that essay. I was afraid, at first,
it was going to have more of the fault into which you essay writers
generally fall, of being a comment on the abuse of a thing, and not
on the thing itself. There always seems to me to want another essay
on the other side. But I think, at the end, you protect yourself
against misconstruction. In the spirit of the essay, you know, of
course, that I quite agree with you. Indeed, I differ from all the
ordinary biographers of that independent gentleman, Don't Care. I
believe Don't Care came to a good end. At any rate he came to some
end. Whereas numbers of people never have beginning, or ending, of
their own. An obscure dramatist, Milverton, whom we know of, makes
one of his characters say, in reply to some world-fearing wretch:

"While you, you think
What others think, or what you think they'll say,
Shaping your course by something scarce more tangible
Than dreams, at best the shadows on the stream
Of aspen leaves by flickering breezes swayed--
Load me with irons, drive me from morn till night,
I am not the utter slave which that man is
Whose sole word, thought, and deed are built on what