"
The man's modesty was absolutely sincere; yet what a strange
confusion of modesty and vanity after all! If the humility had been
PERFECTLY unaffected, he would have felt that the man who really
merited such a description deserved no memorial at all; or again,
if he had had no sense of credit, he would have left the choice of
a memorial to any who might wish to commemorate him. If one
analyses the feeling underneath the words, it will be seen to
consist of a desire to be remembered, a hope almost amounting to a
belief that his work was worthy of commemoration, coupled with a
sincere desire not to exaggerate its value. And yet silence would
have attested his humility far more effectually than any calculated
speech!
The dramatic sense is not a thing which necessarily increases as
life goes on; some people have it from the very beginning. I have
an elderly friend who is engaged on a very special sort of
scientific research of a wholly unimportant kind. He is just as
incapable as my sympathetic friend of talking about anything except
his own interests; "You don't mind my speaking about my work?" he
says with a brilliant smile; "you see it means so much to me.
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