There are some who attain, after infinite delays, a due power of
expression, and these are often the happiest of all writers, because
they have the sense of successful effort. And then, lastly, there are a
divine few, like Shakespeare, in whom both the perception and the power
of expression seem limitless.
But if a man has once embraced the artistic ideal, he must embark upon
what is the most terrible of all risks. There is a small chance that he
may find his exact subject and his exact medium, and that the subject
may be one which is of a widespread interest. But there are innumerable
chances against him. Either the fibre of his mind is commonplace; or he
is born out of his due time, when men are not interested in what are
his chief preoccupations; or he may miss his subject; or he may be
stiff, ungainly, puerile in expression.
All of these are our literary failures, and life is likely to be for
them a bitter business. I am speaking, of course, of men who embrace
the matter seriously; and the misery of their position is that they
will be confounded with the dilettantes and amateurs who take up
literature as a fancy or as a hobby, or for even less worthy motives.
A man such as I have described, who has the passion for authorship, and
who fails in the due combination of gifts, must face the possibility of
being regarded as a worse than useless being; as unpractical, childish,
slipshod, silly, worth no one's attention.
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