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of human nature. All comprehension is creation; the woman I
love is somewhat of my handiwork; and the great lover, like
the great painter, is he that can so embellish his subject as
to make her more than human, whilst yet by a cunning art he
has so based his apotheosis on the nature of the case that
the woman can go on being a true woman, and give her
character free play, and show littleness, or cherish spite,
or be greedy of common pleasures, and he continue to worship
without a thought of incongruity. To love a character is
only the heroic way of understanding it. When we love, by
some noble method of our own or some nobility of mien or
nature in the other, we apprehend the loved one by what is
noblest in ourselves. When we are merely studying an
eccentricity, the method of our study is but a series of
allowances. To begin to understand is to begin to
sympathise; for comprehension comes only when we have stated
another's faults and virtues in terms of our own. Hence the
proverbial toleration of artists for their own evil
creations. Hence, too, it came about that Dick Naseby, a
high-minded creature, and as scrupulous and brave a gentleman
as you would want to meet, held in a sort of affection the
various human creeping things whom he had met and studied.
One of these was Mr. Peter Van Tromp, an English-speaking,
two-legged animal of the international genus, and by
profession of general and more than equivocal utility. Years
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