Page:The Spirit of Japanese Art, by Yone Noguchi; 1915.djvu/85

80 art, is already carried away by the dear, sweet, precious memory of his rare personality. "Above all, he was rarest as friend," my mind always whispers to me every two minutes from the confusion of my thought, this and that, and again that and this, on him. To say that I think of him too much and for too many things would be well-nigh the same as to say that I am unfitted to tell about him intelligibly. I confess that I had a little difference with him on the subject of his own art here and there, while I was absorbed in his conversation or criticism (I always believed and said—did he dislike me when I said that?—he was a better and greater critic than artist), now by the cozy fire of a winter evening, then with the trees and grasses languid with summer's heat; he was the first and last man to whom I went when I felt particularly ambitious and particularly tired, and I dare say that he was pleased to see me. My own delight to have him as my friend was in truth doubled, when I thought that his personality and art, remarkable as they are honest, true, and sympathetic, were almost unknown at home except in a little narrow community; as I said before, he was a recluse. In England, many readers of Mr. Markino's book, A Japanese Artist in London, will remember Hara's name, as it is frequently repeated in the book; and a certain well-known English critic had an occasion once or twice to