THE DAWN
My Imagination has its dancing-places, like the Dawn in Homer; there are terraces, with balustrades and marble fountains, where Ideal Beings smile at my approach; there are ilex-groves and beech trees in whose shadows I hold forth for ever; gardens fairer than all earthly gardens where groups of ladies grow never weary of listening to my voice.
THE PEAR
'But every one is enthusiastic about the book!' I protested. 'Well, what if they are?' was the answer.
I too am a Superior Person, but the predicament was awkward. To appear the dupe of a vulgar admiration, to be caught crying stale fish at a choice luncheon party!
'Oh, of course!' I hit back, 'I know it's considered the thing just now to despise the age one lives in. No one, even in Balham, will admit that they have read the books of the day. But my attitude has always been' (what had it been? I had to think in a hurry), 'I have always felt that it was more interesting, after all, to belong to one's own epoch; to share its dated and unique vision, that flying glimpse of the great panorama, which no subsequent generation can ever recapture. To be Elizabethan in the age of Elizabeth; romantic at the height of the Romantic Movement—'