Mr. Conrad is nothing of a peacock. You may stare at him as long as you like, but he will never respond with a sudden spread of gorgeous vanities. He is more like some bird that takes on the protective colouring of the earth and delights in avoiding rather than in attracting the prying eye. Flatter him as you will; call him a phœnix or a bird of paradise: he may be secretly pleased but he will only croak gruffly in reply, “To have the gift of words is no such great matter.” He does not know how to play up to our inquisitive admiration. We may think, as when we take up _A Personal Record_, that now at last we have caught him in a position in which he is bound to show us his fine feathers. But it is a vain hope. Glimpses we get--amazing glimpses--but never the near and detailed spectacle we desire. He protests that he is no cynic, but is he sure that he does not find a cynical amusement in tantalising our curiosity? Otherwise, would he have written in the preface to _Notes on Life and Letters_ that “perhaps it will do something to help towards a better vision of the man, if it gives no more than a partial view of a piece of his back, a little dusty (after the process of tidying-up), a little bowed, and receding from the world not because of weariness or misanthropy, but for other reasons that cannot be helped”? It may be that Mr. Conrad can suggest more enticing mysteries by a portrait of a piece of an author’s back than other writers can by a full-length representation, showing the polish on the boots and the crease in the trousers. In art the half (or very much less) is greater than the whole. Still, Mr. Conrad’s principal object in showing us the back is that it may leave us unsatisfied and speculating. He does not intend to satisfy us. It is as though he had written on the title-page of his autobiography: “Thus far and no further.”