Such as it is, this essay was composed
in the course of a walk, this morning. I am not one of those
extremists who must have a vehicle to every destination. I never go
out of my way, as it were, to avoid exercise. I take it as it comes,
and take it in good part. That valetudinarians are always chattering
about it, and indulging in it to excess, is no reason for despising
it. I am inclined to think that in moderation it is rather good for
one, physically. But, pending a time when no people wish me to go and
see them, and I have no wish to go and see any one, and there is
nothing whatever for me to do off my own premises, I never will go out
for a walk.
QUIA IMPERFECTUM
1918.
I have often wondered that no one has set himself to collect
unfinished works of art. There is a peculiar charm for all of us in
that which was still in the making when its maker died, or in that
which he laid aside because he was tired of it, or didn't see his way
to the end of it, or wanted to go on to something else. Mr. Pickwick
and the Ancient Mariner are valued friends of ours, but they do not
preoccupy us like Edwin Drood or Kubla Khan. Had that revolving chair
at Gad's Hill become empty but a few weeks later than it actually did,
or had Samuel Taylor Coleridge in the act of setting down his dream
about the Eastern potentate not been interrupted by `a person on
business from Porlock' and so lost the thread of the thing for ever,
from two what delightful glades for roaming in would our fancy be
excluded! The very globe we live on is a far more fascinating sphere
than it can have been when men supposed that men like themselves would
be on it to the end of time.
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