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Hannibal now recrossed the Apennines, descended into the rich plains of Campania, and laid waste, without opposition, that fertile territory. But he was unable either to make himself master of any of the towns, or to draw the wary Fabius to a battle. The Roman general contented himself with occupying the mountain passes leading from Samnium into Campania, by which Hannibal must of necessity retreat, and believed that he had caught him, as it were, in a trap; but Hannibal eluded his vigilance by an ingenious stratagem, passed the defiles of the Apennines without loss, and established himself in the plains of Apulia, where he collected supplies from all sides, in order to prepare for the winter. Meantime the Romans, having become impatient at the inactivity of Fabius, raised Minucius, the Master of the Horse, to an equality in command with Fabius. His rashness very nearly gave Hannibal the opportunity, for which he was ever on the watch, to crush the Roman army by a decisive blow; but Fabius was able to save his colleague from destruction; and Hannibal, after obtaining only a partial advantage, took up his winter quarters at the small town of Geronium. Minucius acknowledged his error, and resumed his post of Master of the Horse.

It is probably a wholly false antithesis to speak of life as a contrast to literature; one might as well draw a distinction between eating and drinking. What is meant as a rule is that if a man devotes himself to imaginative creation, to the perception and expression of beauty, he must be prepared to withdraw from other activities. But the imagination is a function of life, after all, and precisely the same holds good of stockbroking. The real fact is that we Anglo-Saxons, by instinct and inheritance, think of the acquisition of property as the most obvious function of life. As long as a man is occupied in acquiring property, we ask no further questions; we take for granted that he is virtuously employed, as long as he breaks no social rules: while if he succeeds in getting into his hands an unusual share of the divisible goods of the world, we think highly of him. Indeed, our ideals have altered very little since barbarous times, and we still are under the impression that resourcefulness is the mark of the hero. I imagine that leisure as an occupation is much more distrusted and disapproved of in America than in England; but even in England, where the power to be idle is admired and envied, a man who lives as heroic a life as can be attained by playing golf and shooting pheasants is more trusted and respected than a rich man who paints or composes music for his amusement. Field sports are intelligible enough; the pursuit of art requires some explanation, and incurs a suspicion of effeminacy or eccentricity. Only when authorship becomes a source of profit is it thoroughly respectable.

Far from finding the spring and motion of life diminished, I feel that the current of it runs with a sharper and clearer intensity, because I have learned my limitations, and expend no energy in useless enterprises. I have learned what the achievements are which come joyfully bearing their sheaves with them, and what are the trivial and fruitless aims. When I was younger I desired to be known and recognised and deferred to. I wanted to push my way discreetly into many companies, to produce an impression, to create a sense of admiration. Now as the sunset draws nearer, and the enriched light, withdrawn from the farther horizon, begins to pulsate more intensely in the quarter whence it must soon altogether fade, I begin to see that vague and widely ranging effects have a thinness and shallowness about them. It is a poor thing just to see oneself transiently reflected in a hundred little mirrors. There is no touch of reality about that. Little greetings, casual flashes of courteous talk, petty compliments--these are things that fade as soon as they are born. The only thing worth doing is a little bit of faithful and solid work, something given away which costs one real pain, a few ideas and thoughts worked patiently out, a few hearts really enlivened and inspirited. And then, too, comes the consciousness that much of one's cherished labour is of no use at all except to oneself; that work is not a magnificent gift presented to others, but a wholesome privilege conceded to oneself, that the love which brought with it but a momentary flash of self-regarding pleasure is not love at all, and that only love which means suffering--not delicate regrets and luxurious reveries, but hard and hopeless pain--is worth the name of love at all. Those are some of the lights of sunset, the enfolding gleams that are on their way to death, and which yet testify that the light which wanes and lapses here, drawn reluctantly away from dark valley and sombre woodland, is yet striding ahead over dewy uplands and breaking seas, past the upheaving shoulder of the world.

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