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“Above all, it is choice. Pater is at all points an eclectic. Several times he insists upon the necessity of separating what is touched with ' intense and individual power' in a man's work from what has ' almost no character at all.' In art, in life, the best of whatever kind will delight him. He loves the spectacle of 'brilliant sins and exquisite amusements.' The strong, the magnificent, the saintly, the beautiful, the cruel, the versatile, the intense, the gay, the brilliant, the weary, the sad-coloured, everything but the dull, delights him. From religion, philosophy, poetry, art, Nature, human life, he summons what is rich and strange. He delivers it in choicest language because it has to be worthy of his own choicest moments of enjoyment. For here also he is an eclectic, ignoring the ordinary, the dull, the trite.” — Edward Thomas