Be good, sweet maid, and let who will be clever. Do noble things, not dream them, all day long: And so make life, death, and that vast for ever One grand sweet song. In the original, as written down in her album, there is a third verse between the two:— I’ll tell you how to sing a clearer carol Than lark who hails the dawn on breezy down, To earn yourself a purer poet’s laurel Than Shakespeare’s crown. LITERARY RECOLLECTIONS III Knowing both Kingsley and Froude very intimately, I soon came to know many of their friends, though my residence at Oxford kept me clear from the vortex of literary society in London. In some respects I regretted it, but in others I found it a great blessing. It requires not only mental, but considerable physical strength to stand the wear and tear of London life, and I confess I never could understand how some of my friends, Browning, Tyndall, Huxley, M. Arnold, and others, could manage to do any serious work, and at the same time serve the Moloch of Society to whom so many men and women in London offer themselves and their children as willing sacrifices year after year. They had not only to dine out and lose their evenings, but wherever they went they had to shine, they had often to make speeches, long speeches, at public dinners, they came home tired and slept badly, and in the morning they were interrupted again by letters, by newspapers, by calls, then by meetings and committees, by the inevitable leaving of cards, and, lastly, there was with many of them their official work. Society is a voracious animal, and has deprived the world of much that can only be the outcome of quiet hours, of continuous thought, and of uninterrupted labour. These men must have had not only the brain, but the physical constitution also of giants, to survive this constant social worry.