The Common Reader; How It Strikes a Contemporary

There is a sentence in Dr. Johnson’s Life of Gray which might well be written up in all those rooms, too humble to be called libraries, yet full of books, where the pursuit of reading is carried on by private people. “. . . I rejoice to concur with the common reader; for by the common sense of readers, uncorrupted by literary prejudices, after all the refinements of subtilty and the dogmatism of learning, must be finally decided all claim to poetical honours.” It defines their qualities; it dignifies their aims; it bestows upon a pursuit which devours a great deal of time, and is yet apt to leave behind it nothing very substantial, the sanction of the great man’s approval.

约翰逊博士的《格雷传》里有一句话，很可以写在所有这样的房间里：它们太简陋，称不上图书馆，却摆满了书，私人在那里从事读书这件事。“……我很高兴能与普通读者意见一致；因为，在一切精微的辨析和学问的武断之后，诗歌荣誉的一切要求，最终必须由未受文学偏见败坏的读者的常识来裁定。”它界定了他们的品质；它使他们的目标变得庄严；一种追求耗费大量时间，却往往留不下什么实实在在的东西，它却给这种追求加上了这位伟人的认可。

The explanation is a strange one. It is equally disconcerting to the reader who wishes to take his bearings in the chaos of contemporary literature and to the writer who has a natural desire to know whether his own work, produced with infinite pains and in almost utter darkness, is likely to burn for ever among the fixed luminaries of English letters or, on the contrary, to put out the fire. But if we identify ourselves with the reader and explore his dilemma first, our bewilderment is short-lived enough. The same thing has happened so often before. We have heard the doctors disagreeing about the new and agreeing about the old twice a year on the average, in spring and autumn, ever since Robert Elsmere, or was it Stephen Phillips, somehow pervaded the atmosphere, and there was the same disagreement among grown-up people about them. It would be much more marvellous, and indeed much more upsetting, if, for a wonder, both gentlemen agreed, pronounced Blank’s book an undoubted masterpiece, and thus faced us with the necessity of deciding whether we should back their judgement to the extent of ten and sixpence. Both are critics of reputation; the opinions tumbled out so spontaneously here will be starched and stiffened into columns of sober prose which will uphold the dignity of letters in England and America.

这个解释是一个奇怪的解释。它同样使两种人不安：一种是想在当代文学的混乱中辨明方向的读者，另一种是作家，他自然想知道，他以无限的辛劳、几乎在完全的黑暗中写出的作品，是会在英国文学那些恒定的明星之间永远燃烧下去，还是相反，会把火扑灭。但是，如果我们把自己当作读者，先来探讨他的困境，那么我们的困惑就不会持续太久。同样的事情以前发生过太多次了。自从《罗伯特·埃尔斯米尔》——或者是斯蒂芬·菲利普斯吧——不知怎么地弥漫在空气中，成年人对他们也有同样的分歧以来，我们平均每年两次，在春天和秋天，听到博士们对新的东西意见不一，对旧的东西意见一致。如果出现奇迹，两位先生意见一致了，宣布某某的书是无可置疑的杰作，从而使我们不得不决定，是否该拿出十先令六便士来支持他们的判断，那倒会奇怪得多，也让人不安得多。两位都是有声望的批评家；这里如此随意地脱口而出的意见，将会被浆硬、挺直，变成一栏栏严肃的散文，在英国和美国维护文学的尊严。

It must be some innate cynicism, then, some ungenerous distrust of contemporary genius, which determines us automatically as the talk goes on that, were they to agree—which they show no signs of doing—half a guinea is altogether too large a sum to squander upon contemporary enthusiasms, and the case will be met quite adequately by a card to the library. Still the question remains, and let us put it boldly to the critics themselves. Is there no guidance nowadays for a reader who yields to none in reverence for the dead, but is tormented by the suspicion that reverence for the dead is vitally connected with understanding of the living? After a rapid survey both critics are agreed that there is unfortunately no such person. For what is their own judgement worth where new books are concerned? Certainly not ten and sixpence. And from the stores of their experience they proceed to bring forth terrible examples of past blunders; crimes of criticism which, if they had been committed against the dead and not against the living, would have lost them their jobs and imperilled their reputations. The only advice they can offer is to respect one’s own instincts, to follow them fearlessly and, rather than submit them to the control of any critic or reviewer alive, to check them by reading and reading again the masterpieces of the past.

那么，一定是某种天生的犬儒主义，某种对当代天才的不够宽厚的不信任，使我们在谈话进行时不由自主地断定：就算他们意见一致——而他们一点也没有一致的迹象——半个基尼也是一笔太大的钱，不该浪费在对当代的热情上；拿一张借书证到图书馆去，就足够应付了。然而问题仍然存在，我们不妨大胆地向批评家们本人提出来。一个读者，对死者的崇敬不亚于任何人，却被这样一种怀疑所折磨：对死者的崇敬与对生者的理解是息息相关的——如今就没有什么指引给这样的读者吗？经过一番迅速的审视，两位批评家一致认为，不幸，没有这样的人。因为在新书的问题上，他们自己的判断值多少呢？当然不值十先令六便士。于是他们从自己经验的储藏里，拿出过去失误的可怕例子；批评的罪行，如果是对死者而不是对生者犯下的，会让他们丢掉饭碗、危及名声。他们所能提供的唯一忠告，就是尊重自己的本能，无所畏惧地追随它，与其让它受任何在世的批评家或书评家的支配，不如通过一读再读过去的杰作来检验它。

Thanking them humbly, we cannot help reflecting that it was not always so. Once upon a time, we must believe, there was a rule, a discipline, which controlled the great republic of readers in a way which is now unknown. That is not to say that the great critic—the Dryden, the Johnson, the Coleridge, the Arnold—was an impeccable judge of contemporary work, whose verdicts stamped the book indelibly and saved the reader the trouble of reckoning the value for himself. The mistakes of these great men about their own contemporaries are too notorious to be worth recording. But the mere fact of their existence had a centralising influence. That alone, it is not fantastic to suppose, would have controlled the disagreements of the dinner-table and given to random chatter about some book just out an authority now entirely to seek. The diverse schools would have debated as hotly as ever, but at the back of every reader’s mind would have been the consciousness that there was at least one man who kept the main principles of literature closely in view; who, if you had taken to him some eccentricity of the moment, would have brought it into touch with permanence and tethered it by his own authority in the contrary blasts of praise and blame. But when it comes to the making of a critic, nature must be generous and society ripe. The scattered dinner-tables of the modern world, the chase and eddy of the various currents which compose the society of our time, could only be dominated by a giant of fabulous dimensions. And where is even the very tall man whom we have the right to expect? Reviewers we have but no critic; a million competent and incorruptible policemen but no judge. Men of taste and learning and ability are for ever lecturing the young and celebrating the dead. But the too frequent result of their able and industrious pens is a desiccation of the living tissues of literature into a network of little bones. Nowhere shall we find the downright vigour of a Dryden, or Keats with his fine and natural bearing, his profound insight and sanity, or Flaubert and the tremendous power of his fanaticism, or Coleridge, above all, brewing in his head the whole of poetry and letting issue now and then one of those profound general statements which are caught up by the mind when hot with the friction of reading as if they were of the soul of the book itself.

我们谦卑地感谢了他们，却禁不住想到，事情并不总是这样的。我们必须相信，从前曾经有过一种规矩，一种纪律，以一种现在已经不为人知的方式，管束着那个伟大的读者共和国。这并不是说，那位伟大的批评家——德莱顿、约翰逊、柯勒律治、阿诺德那样的人——对当代作品是一个无懈可击的裁判，他的裁决给书打上了不可磨灭的印记，免去了读者自己估量其价值的麻烦。这些伟人对他们同时代人所犯的错误，太出名了，不值得记录。但是，仅仅是他们的存在，就有一种使人向心的影响。单是这一点——这样设想并不荒唐——就能控制住餐桌上的分歧，使关于某本新书的随意闲谈获得一种现在完全无处可寻的权威。不同的派别会像以往一样激烈地争论，但是在每一个读者心底都会意识到，至少有一个人始终紧紧地注视着文学的主要原则；如果你把一时的某种古怪东西拿给他看，他会让它同永恒接触，并且在赞扬与责难的相反的狂风中，凭他自己的权威把它拴住。但是，说到造就一个批评家，自然必须慷慨，社会必须成熟。现代世界里那些分散的餐桌，构成我们时代社会的种种潮流的追逐和回旋，只有一个身材大得像神话一样的巨人才能统驭。而我们有权期待的那个哪怕只是很高的人，又在哪里呢？我们有书评家，却没有批评家；有一百万个称职而廉洁的警察，却没有法官。有品味、有学问、有才能的人，总是在给年轻人讲课，在颂扬死者。但是，他们能干而勤奋的笔，太常见的结果，是把文学活生生的组织弄干，变成一张小骨头织成的网。我们哪里也找不到德莱顿那样直截了当的活力，或者济慈那样优美自然的风度、深刻的洞察和清明，或者福楼拜和他那狂热的巨大力量，或者，最重要的是，柯勒律治，他的头脑里酝酿着全部的诗，不时地放出一句深刻的、概括的话来，心灵在读书读得发热的时候抓住它们，仿佛它们就是这本书的灵魂。

And to all this, too, the critics generously agree. A great critic, they say, is the rarest of beings. But should one miraculously appear, how should we maintain him, on what should we feed him? Great critics, if they are not themselves great poets, are bred from the profusion of the age. There is some great man to be vindicated, some school to be founded or destroyed. But our age is meagre to the verge of destitution. There is no name which dominates the rest. There is no master in whose workshop the young are proud to serve apprenticeship. Mr. Hardy has long since withdrawn from the arena, and there is something exotic about the genius of Mr. Conrad which makes him not so much an influence as an idol, honoured and admired, but aloof and apart. As for the rest, though they are many and vigorous and in the full flood of creative activity, there is none whose influence can seriously affect his contemporaries, or penetrate beyond our day to that not very distant future which it pleases us to call immortality. If we make a century our test, and ask how much of the work produced in these days in England will be in existence then, we shall have to answer not merely that we cannot agree upon the same book, but that we are more than doubtful whether such a book there is. It is an age of fragments. A few stanzas, a few pages, a chapter here and there, the beginning of this novel, the end of that, are equal to the best of any age or author. But can we go to posterity with a sheaf of loose pages, or ask the readers of those days, with the whole of literature before them, to sift our enormous rubbish heaps for our tiny pearls? Such are the questions which the critics might lawfully put to their companions at table, the novelists and poets.

对于这一切，批评家们也慷慨地表示同意。他们说，一位伟大的批评家是最稀罕的生物。但是，即使奇迹般地出现了一位，我们又怎么养活他，拿什么喂他呢？伟大的批评家，如果他们自己不是伟大的诗人，就是从时代的丰饶中培育出来的。有某个伟大的人物要辩护，有某个学派要建立或摧毁。但是我们的时代贫乏得近乎赤贫。没有一个名字压倒其余。没有一位大师，年轻人以在他的作坊里当学徒为荣。哈代先生早已退出了竞技场，康拉德先生的天才里有某种异国情调，使他与其说是一种影响，不如说是一尊偶像，受人尊敬和钦佩，却高高在上，与世隔绝。至于其余的人，虽然人数众多，精力旺盛，正处在创作活动的高潮，却没有一个人的影响能够严重地作用于他的同时代人，或者穿透我们的时代，达到那个并不十分遥远、我们乐于称之为不朽的未来。如果我们以一个世纪为检验标准，问一问如今在英国产生的作品，到那时还有多少会存留下来，那么我们就不得不回答说，我们不仅不能在同一本书上意见一致，而且很怀疑究竟有没有这样一本书。这是一个碎片的时代。几节诗，几页文字，这里那里的一章，这部小说的开头，那部小说的结尾，都比得上任何时代、任何作者最好的东西。但是，我们能带着一束散页去见后人吗？或者能要求那时候的读者——全部文学都摆在他们面前——去筛我们巨大的垃圾堆，找出我们那些小小的珍珠吗？这就是批评家们可以正当地向他们同桌的伙伴们——小说家和诗人们——提出的问题。

At first the weight of pessimism seems sufficient to bear down all opposition. Yes, it is a lean age, we repeat, with much to justify its poverty; but, frankly, if we pit one century against another the comparison seems overwhelmingly against us. Waverley, The Excursion, Kubla Khan, Don Juan, Hazlitt’s Essays, Pride and Prejudice, Hyperion, and Prometheus Unbound were all published between 1800 and 1821. Our century has not lacked industry; but if we ask for masterpieces it appears on the face of it that the pessimists are right. It seems as if an age of genius must be succeeded by an age of endeavour; riot and extravagance by cleanliness and hard work. All honour, of course, to those who have sacrificed their immortality to set the house in order. But if we ask for masterpieces, where are we to look? A little poetry, we may feel sure, will survive; a few poems by Mr. Yeats, by Mr. Davies, by Mr. De la Mare. Mr. Lawrence, of course, has moments of greatness, but hours of something very different. Mr. Beerbohm, in his way, is perfect, but it is not a big way. Passages in Far Away and Long Ago will undoubtedly go to posterity entire. Ulysses was a memorable catastrophe—immense in daring, terrific in disaster. And so, picking and choosing, we select now this, now that, hold it up for display, hear it defended or derided, and finally have to meet the objection that even so we are only agreeing with the critics that it is an age incapable of sustained effort, littered with fragments, and not seriously to be compared with the age that went before.

起初，悲观主义的分量似乎足以压倒一切反对。是的，这是一个贫瘠的时代，我们重复说，它的贫乏有许多理由可以解释；但是，坦白地说，如果我们拿一个世纪同另一个世纪较量，比较的结果似乎压倒性地对我们不利。《威弗利》《漫游》《忽必烈汗》《唐璜》、赫兹利特的随笔、《傲慢与偏见》《海披里安》和《解放了的普罗米修斯》，都是在 1800 年到 1821 年之间出版的。我们这个世纪并不缺少勤奋；但是如果我们要求杰作，那么从表面上看，悲观主义者似乎是对的。看来，一个天才的时代之后，必然是一个努力的时代；放纵和奢华之后，是整洁和辛劳。当然，向那些牺牲了自己的不朽、来把家里收拾整齐的人致敬。但是如果我们要求杰作，我们该到哪里去找呢？我们可以肯定，有一点诗会留下来；叶芝先生的、戴维斯先生的、德拉梅尔先生的几首诗。劳伦斯先生当然有伟大的时刻，但也有好几个小时是很不一样的东西。比尔博姆先生在他的路子上是完美的，但那不是一条宽的路子。《远方与往昔》中的一些段落，无疑会完整地传给后人。《尤利西斯》是一场值得纪念的灾难——胆量之大无与伦比，失败之惨也骇人听闻。就这样，我们挑挑拣拣，一会儿选出这个，一会儿选出那个，举起来展示，听人为它辩护或者嘲笑它，最后不得不面对这样的反驳：即便如此，我们也只不过是同意了批评家们的看法，认为这是一个不能持续努力的时代，满地碎片，不能认真地同前一个时代相比。

After all, then, we are back at the beginning, vacillating from extreme to extreme, at one moment enthusiastic, at the next pessimistic, unable to come to any conclusion about our contemporaries. We have asked the critics to help us, but they have deprecated the task. Now, then, is the time to accept their advice and correct these extremes by consulting the masterpieces of the past. We feel ourselves indeed driven to them, impelled not by calm judgement but by some imperious need to anchor our instability upon their security. But, honestly, the shock of the comparison between past and present is at first disconcerting. Undoubtedly there is a dullness in great books. There is an unabashed tranquillity in page after page of Wordsworth and Scott and Miss Austen which is sedative to the verge of somnolence. Opportunities occur and they neglect them. Shades and subtleties accumulate and they ignore them. They seem deliberately to refuse to gratify those senses which are stimulated so briskly by the moderns; the senses of sight, of sound, of touch—above all, the sense of the human being, his depth and the variety of his perceptions, his complexity, his confusion, his self, in short. There is little of all this in the works of Wordsworth and Scott and Jane Austen. From what, then, arises that sense of security which gradually, delightfully, and completely overcomes us? It is the power of their belief—their conviction, that imposes itself upon us. In Wordsworth, the philosophic poet, this is obvious enough. But it is equally true of the careless Scott, who scribbled masterpieces to build castles before breakfast, and of the modest maiden lady who wrote furtively and quietly simply to give pleasure. In both there is the same natural conviction that life is of a certain quality. They have their judgement of conduct. They know the relations of human beings towards each other and towards the universe. Neither of them probably has a word to say about the matter outright, but everything depends on it. Only believe, we find ourselves saying, and all the rest will come of itself. Only believe, to take a very simple instance which the recent publication of The Watsons brings to mind, that a nice girl will instinctively try to soothe the feelings of a boy who has been snubbed at a dance, and then, if you believe it implicitly and unquestioningly, you will not only make people a hundred years later feel the same thing, but you will make them feel it as literature. For certainty of that kind is the condition which makes it possible to write. To believe that your impressions hold good for others is to be released from the cramp and confinement of personality. It is to be free, as Scott was free, to explore with a vigour which still holds us spell-bound the whole world of adventure and romance. It is also the first step in that mysterious process in which Jane Austen was so great an adept. The little grain of experience once selected, believed in, and set outside herself, could be put precisely in its place, and she was then free to make of it, by a process which never yields its secrets to the analyst, into that complete statement which is literature.

那么，说到底，我们又回到了起点，从一个极端摇摆到另一个极端，一会儿热情，一会儿悲观，对我们的同时代人得不出任何结论。我们请批评家们帮助我们，可是他们推辞了这个任务。那么，现在正是接受他们的忠告、通过请教过去的杰作来纠正这些极端的时候了。我们确实觉得自己是被赶到它们那里去的，推动我们的不是冷静的判断，而是一种迫切的需要，要把我们的不安定系泊在它们的安稳之上。但是，老实说，过去和现在之间比较的冲击，起初是令人不安的。伟大的书里无疑有一种沉闷。华兹华斯、司各特和奥斯汀小姐的作品，一页又一页，有一种毫不羞愧的平静，平静得几乎让人昏昏欲睡。机会出现了，他们却置之不理。细微的差别和微妙之处积累起来，他们却视而不见。他们似乎故意拒绝满足那些被现代人如此活泼地刺激起来的感官；视觉、听觉、触觉——尤其是对人的感觉，对他的深度、他的种种知觉的多样、他的复杂、他的混乱，一句话，对他的自我的感觉。华兹华斯、司各特和简·奥斯汀的作品里，这些东西很少。那么，那种逐渐地、愉快地、完全地征服我们的安全感，是从哪里来的呢？是他们信念的力量——他们的确信，把它自己强加给了我们。在哲理诗人华兹华斯身上，这是够明显的。但是，对那位漫不经心的司各特——他在早饭前胡乱写出一部部杰作，好去造城堡——和那位谦逊的未婚女士——她悄悄地、安静地写作，只是为了给人乐趣——来说，也同样是真的。在他们两人身上都有同样天然的确信：生活具有某种性质。他们对行为有他们的判断。他们知道人与人之间、人与宇宙之间的关系。他们两人大概都没有直截了当地就这件事说过一句话，但是一切都取决于它。只要相信，我们发现自己在说，其余的一切都会自然而来。只要相信——举一个很简单的例子，最近《沃森一家》的出版使人想起了它——一个好姑娘会本能地设法抚慰一个在舞会上受了冷落的男孩的感情，那么，如果你毫无保留、毫不怀疑地相信这一点，你就不仅会使一百年以后的人们感到同样的东西，而且会使他们把它当作文学来感受。因为那种确定性，正是使写作成为可能的条件。相信你的印象对别人也适用，就是从个性的痉挛和禁锢中解放出来。就是像司各特那样自由，以一种至今仍让我们着迷的活力，去探索整个冒险和传奇的世界。这也是那个神秘过程的第一步，简·奥斯汀是这个过程的大行家。那一小粒经验，一旦被选中、被相信、被放到她自身之外，就能被准确地放到它的位置上，于是她就能自由地，通过一个永远不会向分析者泄露其秘密的过程，把它造成那个完整的陈述，那就是文学。

If this description holds good, they say, and is not, as it may well be, entirely dependent upon our position at the table and certain purely personal relationships to mustard pots and flower vases, then the risks of judging contemporary work are greater than ever before. There is every excuse for them if they are wide of the mark; and no doubt it would be better to retreat, as Matthew Arnold advised, from the burning ground of the present to the safe tranquillity of the past. “We enter on burning ground,” wrote Matthew Arnold, “as we approach the poetry of times so near to us, poetry like that of Byron, Shelley, and Wordsworth, of which the estimates are so often not only personal, but personal with passion,” and this, they remind us, was written in the year 1880. Beware, they say, of putting under the microscope one inch of a ribbon which runs many miles; things sort themselves out if you wait; moderation and a study of the classics are to be recommended. Moreover, life is short; the Byron centenary is at hand; and the burning question of the moment is, did he, or did he not, marry his sister? To sum up, then—if indeed any conclusion is possible when everybody is talking at once and it is time to be going—it seems that it would be wise for the writers of the present to renounce for themselves the hope of creating masterpieces. Their poems, plays, biographies, novels are not books but notebooks, and Time, like a good schoolmaster, will take them in his hands, point to their blots and erasions, and tear them across; but he will not throw them into the waste-paper basket. He will keep them because other students will find them very useful. It is from notebooks of the present that the masterpieces of the future are made. Literature, as the critics were saying just now, has lasted long, has undergone many changes, and it is only a short sight and a parochial mind that will exaggerate the importance of these squalls, however they may agitate the little boats now tossing out at sea. The storm and the drenching are on the surface; and continuity and calm are in the depths.

他们说，如果这番描述站得住脚，而且并不像很可能的那样，完全取决于我们在桌边的位置，取决于我们同芥末瓶和花瓶的某些纯粹个人的关系，那么，评判当代作品的风险就比以往任何时候都大。如果他们没有说中，那是完全情有可原的；毫无疑问，最好还是像马修·阿诺德所建议的那样，从现在这片燃烧的土地上退回到过去那安全的宁静中去。“当我们走近离我们如此之近的时代的诗歌，”马修·阿诺德写道，“像拜伦、雪莱和华兹华斯那样的诗歌，我们就走上了燃烧的土地，对这些诗的评价，往往不仅是个人的，而且是带着激情的个人的。”他们提醒我们，这是在 1880 年写的。他们说，当心，不要把一条长达许多英里的丝带的一英寸放在显微镜下；如果你等一等，事情自会理出头绪；节制和研究经典是值得推荐的。何况，人生短促；拜伦的百年纪念就要到了；而眼下的热门问题是：他到底娶没娶他的妹妹？那么，总结起来——如果在人人同时说话、又到了该走的时候还能得出什么结论的话——看来，当代的作家们为了自己，放弃创造杰作的希望，是明智的。他们的诗、戏剧、传记、小说，不是书，而是笔记本，时间就像一位好教师，会把它们拿在手里，指出上面的墨迹和涂改，把它们撕成两半；但是他不会把它们扔进废纸篓。他会保留它们，因为别的学生会发现它们很有用。未来的杰作，正是从现在的笔记本里造出来的。文学，正如批评家们刚才说的，已经延续了很久，经历了许多变化，只有目光短浅、心胸狭隘的人，才会夸大这些狂风的重要性，不管它们怎样颠簸着此刻正在海上摇荡的小船。风暴和浸湿都在表面；连续和平静在深处。

As for the critics whose task it is to pass judgement upon the books of the moment, whose work, let us admit, is difficult, dangerous, and often distasteful, let us ask them to be generous of encouragement, but sparing of those wreaths and coronets which are so apt to get awry, and fade, and make the wearers, in six months time, look a little ridiculous. Let them take a wider, a less personal view of modern literature, and look indeed upon the writers as if they were engaged upon some vast building, which being built by common effort, the separate workmen may well remain anonymous. Let them slam the door upon the cosy company where sugar is cheap and butter plentiful, give over, for a time at least, the discussion of that fascinating topic—whether Byron married his sister—and, withdrawing, perhaps, a handsbreadth from the table where we sit chattering, say something interesting about literature. Let us buttonhole them as they leave, and recall to their memory that gaunt aristocrat, Lady Hester Stanhope, who kept a milk-white horse in her stable in readiness for the Messiah and was for ever scanning the mountain tops, impatiently but with confidence, for signs of his approach, and ask them to follow her example; scan the horizon; see the past in relation to the future; and so prepare the way for masterpieces to come.

至于那些负责评判时下书籍的批评家们，我们得承认，他们的工作是困难的、危险的，而且常常是令人讨厌的；让我们请求他们慷慨地给予鼓励，但要吝惜那些花环和冠冕，它们太容易戴歪、褪色，使戴的人在六个月之后显得有点可笑。让他们对现代文学采取一种更宽广、更少个人色彩的看法，真的把作家们看作是在从事某座巨大的建筑，这建筑是由共同的努力建造的，各个工匠完全可以不留名姓。让他们对那糖价便宜、黄油充足的舒适的伙伴们砰地关上门，至少暂时不再讨论那个迷人的话题——拜伦是否娶了他的妹妹——也许，从我们正坐着闲聊的桌边退开一掌之宽，说一点关于文学的有趣的话。让我们在他们离开时拉住他们，提醒他们想起那位瘦削的贵族女子赫斯特·斯坦霍普夫人，她在马厩里养着一匹乳白色的马，准备给弥赛亚骑，而且总是在山顶上眺望，焦急而又满怀信心地寻找他到来的迹象；请他们以她为榜样：眺望地平线；在过去与未来的关系中看待过去；从而为将来的杰作准备道路。