Things taken from nature which are in one's own heart

I saw a little figure by Paterson in the Graphic, an illustration for Hugo's Quatre-vingt-treize called “Dolorosa.” It struck me because it resembles the woman at the time I found her. In the same book there is a scene of a proud, hard-hearted man who is suddenly softened by seeing two children in danger - he forgets his own danger and saves the children, even though he is selfish by nature. One never finds an exact likeness of oneself in a book - but one occasionally finds things taken from nature in general which are in one's own heart in a vague and indeterminate way.

I find much that is true in Dickens's The Haunted Man. Do you know it? Neither in Quatre-vingt-treize nor in The Haunted Man do I find my own self - everything is different, occasionally even quite the opposite - but much that has gone on in my mind is reawakened when I read such books.

To Anton von Rappard, from The Hague, 7 February 1883, Letter R21
Translation courtesy of Robert Harrison.
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