But if they make any sort of attempt
to be politicians, we can only point out to them that they are not
as yet even good journalists.
IX. The Moods of Mr. George Moore
Mr. George Moore began his literary career by writing his
personal confessions; nor is there any harm in this if he had
not continued them for the remainder of his life. He is a man
of genuinely forcible mind and of great command over a kind
of rhetorical and fugitive conviction which excites and pleases.
He is in a perpetual state of temporary honesty. He has admired
all the most admirable modern eccentrics until they could stand
it no longer. Everything he writes, it is to be fully admitted,
has a genuine mental power. His account of his reason for
leaving the Roman Catholic Church is possibly the most admirable
tribute to that communion which has been written of late years.
For the fact of the matter is, that the weakness which has rendered
barren the many brilliancies of Mr. Moore is actually that weakness
which the Roman Catholic Church is at its best in combating.
Mr. Moore hates Catholicism because it breaks up the house
of looking-glasses in which he lives. Mr. Moore does not dislike
so much being asked to believe in the spiritual existence
of miracles or sacraments, but he does fundamentally dislike
being asked to believe in the actual existence of other people.
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