For the time being he is under the thrall of a
strong desire to make something musical, beautiful, true, life-like. It
is a criticism of life that all writers, from the highest to the
humblest, aim at. They are amazed, thrilled, enchanted by the sight and
the scene, by the relationships and personalities they see round them.
These they must depict; and in a life where so much is fleeting, they
must seek to stamp the impression in some lasting medium. It is the
beauty and strangeness of life that overpowers the artist. He has
little time to devote himself to things of a different value, to the
getting of position or influence or wealth. He cannot give himself up
to filling his leisure pleasantly, by society or amusement. These are
but things to fill a vacant space of weariness or of gestation. For him
the one important thing is the shock, the surprise, the delight, the
wonder of a thousand impressions on his perceptive personality. And his
success, his effect, his range, depend upon the uniqueness of his
personality in part, and in part upon his power of expressing that
personality.
Of course, there are natures whose perceptiveness outruns their power
of expression--and these are, as a rule, the dissatisfied, unhappy
temperaments that one encounters; there are others whose power of
expression outruns their perceptiveness, and these are facile, fluent,
empty, agreeable writers.
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