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GEORGE MOORE AND JOHN FREEMAN
Freeman: I certainly hope that you do not speak to others as openly as you do to me.
Moore: You would not like, then, truth to prevail?
Freeman: Like Pilate, I ask you: What is truth? Your judgement is at variance with opinions that proceed from the highest to the lowest. Everybody believes—
Moore: The entire Press believes, and would shed the last drop of its ink in defence of the literary opinions of the many.
Freeman: You would then set aside the literary opinions of the many? Even that of your friend, Mr Edmund Gosse, who salutes Mr Hardy as "the poet who is, without dispute, the head of the literary profession, and, so I believe, the first of living men of letters in the world?"
Moore: Mr Gosse speaks out of his lights, and I speak out of mine, and I do not think that anything would be gained by my decrying his as a false light and mine as a true. A great deal of what I am saying, Mr Freeman, will appear in print as soon as Mr Hardy steps on board Charon's boat.
Freeman: You think that others share your opinions and are probably at this moment anxious to utter them, but refrain. . . .
Moore: But refrain from good taste. Like many another, Mr Hardy is surrounded by misguided friends, who only think of his mortal life, but I am concerned with his immortal life and would save him from the wrath of Apollo. I would send him over in Charon's boat to meet Apollo in a more devout spirit than Mr Gosse's words inspire. I am thinking of what possible indiscretions Mr Hardy may be guilty of when he advances to meet the God; it may be hardly possible for him to restrain some words or gestures of familiarity. It may be that with confident air he will ask the God to point out his (Mr Hardy's) seat to him; or it may be that he will seek his seat himself, and not finding it next to Shakespeare or Aeschylus, he will return and complain to Apollo, who will ask: Who is this one? One of the God's messengers will answer: This is Hardy, the author of Tess, and Jude the Obscure. And the author of these works, the God will reply, would seek a seat next to Aeschylus and Shakespeare! It would be vain for the messengers to try to pacify the angry God—but I will not look further into the future. The depths of Hades may not be reached by human eyes.
