Class 11 English 2024 Edition www.tntextbooks.in · Section 74 · Part 2

said, no doubt, of anglers who forget their fishing-rods. Anglers are generally said - I do not know with what justification- to be the most imaginative of men, and the man who is inventing magnificent lies on the journey home after a day’s fishing is bound to be a little absent-minded in his behaviour. The fishing-rod of reality is forgotten by him as he day-dreams over the fears of the fishing-rod of Utopia. His loss of memory is really a tribute to the intensity of his enjoyment in thinking about his day’s sport. He may forget his fishing-rod, as the poet may forget to post a letter, because his mind is filled with matter more glorious. Absent-mindedness of this kind seems to me all but a virtue. The absent- minded man is often a man who is making the best of life and therefore has no time to remember the mediocre. Who would have trusted Socrates or Coleridge to post a letter? They had souls above such things. The question whether the possession of a good memory is altogether desirable has often been discussed, and men with fallible memories have sometimes tried to make out a case for their superiority. A man, they say, who is a perfect remembering machine is seldom a man of the first intelligence, and they quote - - :