These best teachers climb
beyond teaching to the plane of art; it is themselves, and what is
best in themselves, that they communicate.
I should never forgive myself if I forgot The Egoist. It is art,
if you like, but it belongs purely to didactic art, and from all
the novels I have read (and I have read thousands) stands in a
place by itself. Here is a Nathan for the modern David; here is a
book to send the blood into men's faces. Satire, the angry picture
of human faults, is not great art; we can all be angry with our
neighbour; what we want is to be shown, not his defects, of which
we are too conscious, but his merits, to which we are too blind.
And The Egoist is a satire; so much must be allowed; but it is a
satire of a singular quality, which tells you nothing of that
obvious mote, which is engaged from first to last with that
invisible beam. It is yourself that is hunted down; these are your
own faults that are dragged into the day and numbered, with
lingering relish, with cruel cunning and precision. A young friend
of Mr. Meredith's (as I have the story) came to him in an agony.
'This is too bad of you,' he cried. 'Willoughby is me!' 'No, my
dear fellow,' said the author; 'he is all of us.'
I have read The Egoist five or six times myself, and I mean to read
it again; for I am like the young friend of the anecdote--I think
Willoughby an unmanly but a very serviceable exposure of myself.
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