Page:Following darkness (IA followingdarknes00reid).pdf/18

 effort to do so I shall probably accentuate it, alter it, clip its wings and make it heavy, yet that must be my aim if I am to write at all. I have little eloquence, and perhaps no power of evocation, but the whole great, soft, time-toned picture is before me at this moment, and I cannot resist the temptation to linger over it. If I linger over it pen in hand, what matter?

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 a 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.