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You surely must realise that now ? You must see now that your incapacity of being alone: your nature so exigent in its persistent claim on the attention and time of others: your lack of any power of sustained intellectual concentration: the unfortunate accident — for I like to think it was no more — that you had not yet been able to acquire the “Oxford temper” in intellectual matters, never, I mean, been one who could play gracefully with ideas but had arrived at violence of opinion merely — that all these things, combined with the fact that your desires and interests were in Life not in Art, were as destructive to your own progress in culture as they were to my work as an artist[6a] ? When I compare my friendship with you to my friendship with such still younger men as John Gray and Pierre Lou?s[6.1] I feel ashamed. My real life, my higher life was with them and such as they.
现在肯定你必得意识到这一点吧？你一个人是呆不住的：你的天性是这样迫切执拗地要求别人关心你，花时间陪你；还要看到你缺乏将心智持续地全神贯注的能力：不幸的偶然——说它偶然，因为我希望已不再如此——即你那时还无法养成在探索智性事物方面的“牛津气质”，我的意思是，你这个人从来就不能优雅地玩味各种意念，只会提提暴烈的门户之见——这一切，加上你的各种欲望和兴趣是在生活而不在艺术，两相巧合，对于你本人性灵教养的长进，跟对于我作为艺术家的创作工作，具有同样的破坏性。你现在必得明白这一点吧[6a]？把同你的友谊，跟同像约翰?格雷和皮埃尔?路易斯这样还要年轻的人的友谊相比时，我感到羞愧。我真正的生活，更高层次的生活，是同他们和像他们这样的人在一起的时候。
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