eBooks Base 2000

It
might be well, therefore, to adopt some conventional costume, never
actual, but always graceful and noble. Besides, Webster, for example,
had other costumes than that which he wore in public, and perhaps it was
in those that he lived his most real life; his dressing-gown, his drapery
of the night, the dress that he wore on his fishing-excursions; in these
other costumes he spent three fourths of his time, and most probably was
thus arrayed when he conceived the great thoughts that afterwards, in
some formal and outside mood, he gave forth to the public. I scarcely
think I was right, but am not sure of the contrary. At any rate, I know
that I should have felt much more sure that I knew the real Webster, if I
had seen him in any of the above-mentioned dresses, than either in his
swallow-tailed coat or frock.
Talking of a taste for painting and sculpture, Powers observed that it
was something very different and quite apart from the moral sense, and
that it was often, perhaps generally, possessed by unprincipled men of
ability and cultivation.


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