'If Goethe really died saying "more light," it was very silly of
him: what _he_ wanted was more warmth.'
And he writes home for Richard Jefferies, the man of his own county--for
through Marlborough he had made himself the adopted son of the Wiltshire
Downs.
'In the midst of my setting up and smashing of deities--Masefield,
Hardy, Goethe--I always fall back on Richard Jefferies wandering
about in the background. I have at least the tie of locality with
him.'
A day or two after we incidentally discover that Meredith is up (though
not on Olympus) from a denunciation of Browning on the queer non- (or
super-) aesthetic grounds of which we have spoken:--
'There is much in B. I like. But my feeling towards him has (ever
since I read his life) been that of his to the "Lost Leader." I
cannot understand him consenting to live a purely literary life in
Italy, or (worse still) consenting to be lionised by fashionable
London society. And then I always feel that if less people read
Browning, more would read Meredith (his poetry, I mean.
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