In the foreground there must be the portrait of a boy, but painted in the manner of Rembrandt rather than Bronzino. By this I mean there will be less of firm, clear outline, than of light and shadow. The danger is that in the end there may be too much shadow; but at least I shall not, in the manner of a writer of fiction, have sacrificed my subject for the sake of gaining an additional brightness and vivacity. The spirit of youth is not merely bright and vivacious; above all, it is not merely thoughtless and noisy. It is melancholy, dreamy, passionate; it is admirable, and it is base; it is full of curiosity; it is healthy, and it is morbid; it is animal, and it is spiritual; sensual, yet filled with vague half-realised yearnings after an ideal――that is to say, it is the spirit of life itself, which can never be adequately indicated by the description of a fight or of a football match. CHAPTER II Of my earliest childhood I can form no consecutive picture; I shall therefore pass over it quickly. Certain incidents stand out with extraordinary vividness, but the chain uniting them is wanting, and it is even impossible for me to be quite sure as to the order in which they occurred. Some are so trivial that I do not know why I should remember them; others, at the time, doubtless, more important, have now lost their significance; and countless others, again, I must have completely forgotten. But it occurs to me, on looking back deliberately, that I have changed very little from what I was in those first years. I have developed, but what I was then I am now, what I cared for then I care for now. In other words, like everybody else, I came into this world a mere bundle of inherited instincts, for the activity of which I was no more responsible than for the falling of last night’s rain.