The precise cause of Keene's forbearance it
would be very difficult to explain: more than one feeling probably had
to do with it.
If memory has any pleasures worth speaking of (which many grave and
learned doctors take leave to doubt), certainly among the purest is the
recollection of having once been endowed with the whole love of a rare
and beautiful being which we did not abuse or betray. This is the only
sort of lost riches on which we can look back with comfort out of the
depths of present and pressing poverty; the pearl is so very precious
that it confers on its possessor a certain dignity which does not
entirely pass away, even when the jewel has slipped from his grasp,
following the ring of Polycrates. Alas! alas! less generous than the
blue AEgaean are the sullen waters of the deep. _Mare mortuum._ Only on
these grounds can that wonderful self-possession be accounted for, which
enables men, seemingly ill-fitted for the situation, to confront the
world in all its phases with so grand a calmness. It is refreshing to
see how even coquetry recoils from that armor of proof, and to fancy how
the dead beauty might triumph over the defeat of her living rivals,
laughing the seductions of their loveliness to scorn.
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