Page:Studies of a Biographer 3.djvu/33

 'altruism' a refined self-love? If I am so devoted to some one else that his happiness becomes my happiness, am I not really selfish even when I am sacrificing myself to him? That suggests an infinite variety of tender caressing 'quibbles.' In loving him, as Miss Barrett protests, she never thought of being happy through him; his good was all her idea of good. That is unmistakably true, but then it is equally obvious that his own happiness necessarily implies her happiness, and her logic—if logic were really concerned—would be a little difficult to untwist. Or, again, there is, as Browning observes, a contest of generosity. Each wishes to be grateful for the other's kindnesses; but then, from the other's point of view, the kindness is so obviously a matter of course that gratitude is a solecism. You, says each, are my ideal of perfection, and to have an ideal of perfection implies power of appreciating real excellence. Titania could not love Bottom in her sober senses, and the lover must admit, even by worshipping her, that he is considerably superior to Bottom. Browning, in fact, sums up the dilemma in one of his later letters by roundly declaring that 'there is no love but from beneath, far beneath—that is the law of its nature.' But then, as he entirely believes in