Whether
sometimes the wife or the world be nearer the truth, will one day
come out: the wife MAY be a woman of insight, and see where no one
else can.
In his youth the doctor had read a good deal of poetry, and enjoyed
it in a surface-sort of fashion: discovering that Lady Joan had a
fine taste in verse, he made use of his acquaintance there; and
effected the greater impression, that one without experience is
always ready to take familiarity as indicative of real knowledge,
and think that he, for instance, who can quote largely, must have
vital relation with the things he quotes. But it had never entered
the doctor's head that poetry could have anything to do with
life--even in the case of the poet himself--how much less in that
of his admirer! Never once had it occurred to him to ask how he
could be such a fool as enjoy anything false--beingless save in the
brain of the poet--a mere lie! For that which has nothing to do
with life, what can it be but a lie? Not the less Jermyn got down
book after book, for many a day undusted on his shelves, and read
and re-read many a passage which had once borne him into the
seventh heaven of feeling, suggesting somewhere a better world, in
which lovely things might be had WITHOUT TOO MUCH TROUBLE: now as
he read, he was struck with a mild surprise at finding how much had
lost even the appearance of the admirable; how much of what had
seemed bitter, he could thoroughly accept.
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