Excerpt from The Life of Walter Pater, Vol. 1 of 2 Chapter In short, although Pater had many admirable qualities, and many graces to which we shall endeavour to do justice, he was neither a saint nor a martyr. But to the ordinary reader the most amazing fact in connection with Mr. Benson's book is the announce ment in his preface that he had the most kind and courteous assistance throughout from some of Pater's closest friends. We are quite sure that these friends did not wittingly mislead Mr. Benson, and equally sure that Mr. Benson put down nothing which he believed to be incorrect. What then, it will be asked, is the explanation The answer is a simple one. Pater had a curious dislike to mingling his friendships, and a persistent habit of concealing from one friend what he would reveal to another. For example, I discovered that Mr. Richard C. Jackson, a friend, as we said, of seventeen years' standing, had never heard of Mr. Moorhouse, and I do not suppose that Mr. Moorhouse ever heard of Mr. Jackson, while neither of them is once mentioned in Mr. Benson's pages. Mr. Jackson, Mr. Gosse, Dr. Shadwell, Mr. Richard Robinson, and Dr. Lee were all friends of Pater - but, having little in common with one another, they rarely met, and Pater scarcely ever spoke to one about the others. Thus it is not at all surprising that those from whom Mr. Benson derived his knowledge made amazing mistakes, or that they were absolutely ignorant of what we shall prove to have been the salient events of Pater's life. The condition of affairs then is owing not to them but to the peculiarity of Pater's temperament - and very peculiar it must have been if (and Mr. Benson says it was so) persons could live with him twenty years, during which he wrote tens of thousands of lines of both prose and poetry, and not be aware that he was a writer at all. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.