O.W. Yours interested me—shall I confess?—partly because a few years ago it would have interested me so much less. For at that time, believing that I had discovered—that, in a way, I represented the symbol of my age, I was only interested in myself. Now, in an age to which I do not belong, I find myself interested in others. Robbie, who is the most sincere of flatterers, would have me believe that in this transfer of interest I am making a poor exchange. I am not sure. Till recently, absorbed in myself, I might have missed that new strange writer of things impossible in life, who writes under the name of Benjamin Swift. Ought I to have done so? His style has the gleam of a frozen fire. He writes like a sea-pirate driven by contrary winds to a vain search for tropical forests at the North Pole. Why does he look at life only in profile, as though, met face to face, it might mean death to him? Is he as mysterious, as unaccountable to himself, as he seems to others? L.H. I don’t know whether the fact that he is a well-to-do Scotsman, who finished his education at a German university, can be said to account for him. We have met, and I find him interesting. He reminds me, somehow, of a lion turned hermit, wearing a hair-shirt, and roaring into it to frighten out the fleas. In other words, he is full of contradictions, and revels in them even while they torment him. O.W. A Scotsman? That explains everything. For a man to be both a genius and a Scotsman is the very stage for tragedy. He apparently perceives it. Generally they are unaware of it. R.R. My dear Oscar, why cannot a Scotsman be a genius as comfortably as anyone else? O.W. I ought to have said “artist”: I meant artist. It is much easier for a Scotsman to be a genius than to be an artist. Mr. Gladstone, I believe, claimed to be a Scotsman whenever he stood for a Scottish constituency or spoke to a Scottish audience. The butter-Scotch flavour of it makes me believe it was true. There was no art in that; and yet how truly typical! It was always so successful.... Because, Robbie—to return to your question—your Scotsman believes only in success. How can a man, who regards success as the goal of life, be a true artist? God saved the genius of Robert Burns to poetry by driving him through drink to failure. Think what an appalling figure in literature a successful Burns would have been! He was already trying to write poems in polite English, which was about as ludicrous as for a polite Englishman to try to write poetry in the dialect of Burns. Riotous living and dying saved him from that last degradation of smug prosperity which threatened him. L.H. But do you mean no artists are successful?