so pass judgment, both on themselves and me. I need not say I am
not talking of particular individuals. The only people I would
care to be with now are artists and people who have suffered:
those who know what beauty is, and those who know what sorrow is:
nobody else interests me. Nor am I making any demands on life. In
all that I have said I am simply concerned with my own mental
attitude towards life as a whole; and I feel that not to be ashamed
of having been punished is one of the first points I must attain
to, for the sake of my own perfection, and because I am so
imperfect.

Then I must learn how to be happy. Once I knew it, or thought I
knew it, by instinct. It was always springtime once in my heart.
My temperament was akin to joy. I filled my life to the very brim
with pleasure, as one might fill a cup to the very brim with wine.
Now I am approaching life from a completely new standpoint, and
even to conceive happiness is often extremely difficult for me. I
remember during my first term at Oxford reading in Pater's
RENAISSANCE - that book which has had such strange influence over
my life - how Dante places low in the Inferno those who wilfully
live in sadness; and going to the college library and turning to
the passage in the DIVINE COMEDY where beneath the dreary marsh lie
those who were 'sullen in the sweet air,' saying for ever and ever
through their sighs -


'Tristi fummo
Nell aer dolce che dal sol s'allegra.'