Hugh: Memoirs of a Brother by A.C. Benson

Hugh never seemed to me to treat life in the spirit of a mystic or a dreamer, with unshared and secret experiences, withdrawing into his own ecstasy, half afraid of life, rapt away into interior visions. Though he had a deep curiosity about mystical experiences, he was never a mystic in the sense that he had, as great mystics seem to have had, one shell less, so to speak, between him and the unseen. He lived in the visible and tangible world, loving beautiful secrets; and he was a mystic only in the sense that he had an hourly and daily sense of the presence of God.

He wished to share his dreams and to make known his visions, to declare the glory of God and to show His handiwork. He found the world more and more interesting, as he came to know it, and in the light of the warm welcome it gave him. He had a keen and delicate apprehension of spiritual beauty, and the Mass became to him a consummation of all that he held most holy and dear. He had recognised a mystical presence in the Church of England, but he found a supernatural presence in the Church of Rome; yet he had, too, the instinct of the poet, to translate into form and substance his inmost and sweetest joy, and to lavish it upon others. No one dares to speak of great poets and seers as men who have profaned a mystery by making it known. The deeper that the poet's sense of beauty is, the more does he thirst to communicate it. It is far too divine and tremendous to be secretly and selfishly enjoyed.