with the unknown tribe; but it has been
kindled by the swift and vivid suggestions of details visible to us as
spectators; whereas a severe and continuous effort of imagination is
needed to call up the kindling suggestions of the distant massacre.

So little do writers appreciate the importance of direct vision and
experience, that they are in general silent about what they themselves
have seen and felt, copious in reporting the experience of others. Nay,
they are urgently prompted to say what they know others think, and what
consequently they themselves may be expected to think. They are as if
dismayed at their own individuality, and suppress all traces of it in
order to catch the general tone. Such men may, indeed, be of service in
the ordinary commerce of Literature as distributors. All I wish to
point out is that they are distributors, not producers. The commerce
may be served by second-hand reporters, no less than by original seers;
but we must understand this service to be commercial and not literary.
The common stock of knowledge gains from it no addition. The man who
detects a new fact, a new property in a familiar substance, adds to the
science of the age; but the man who expounds the whole system of the
universe on the reports of others, unenlightened by new conceptions of
his own, does not add a grain to the common store. Great writers may
all be known by their solicitude about authenticity. A common incident,
a simple phenomenon, which has been a part of their experience, often
undergoes what may be called "a transfiguration" in their souls, and
issues in the form of Art; while many world-agitating events in which
they have not been acters, or majestic phenomena of which they were
never spectators, are by them left to the unhesitating incompetence of
writers who imagine that fine subjects make fine works. Either the
great writer leaves such materials untouched, or he employs them as the
vehicle of more cherished, because more authenticated tidings,--he
paints the ruin of an empire as the scenic background for his picture
of the distress of two simple hearts. The inferior writer, because he
lays no emphasis on authenticity, cannot understand this avoidance of
imposing themes. Condemned by naive incapacity to be a reporter, and
not a seer, he hopes to shine by the reflected glory of his subjects.
It is natural in him to mistake ambitious art for high art. He does not
feel that the best is the highest.

I do