in
confusion. And in a lesser degree the same is true of all such
collections, though perhaps this shows that one is more interested in
personality than in artistic performance.

A good many people, too, have a gift for presenting a simple impression
of a beautiful thing, who have not the patience or the power of
combination necessary for working out a finished design; and surely it
is foolish to let the convention of art overrule a man's capacities?
To allow that, to acquiesce in silence, to say that because one cannot
express a thing in a certain way, one will not express it at all, seems
to me to be making an instinct into a moral sanction. One must express
whatever one desires to express, as clearly and as beautifully as
possible, and one must take one's chance as to whether it is a work of
art. To hold one's tongue, if anything appears to be worth saying,
because one does not know the exact code of the professionals, is as
foolish as if a man born in a certain class of society were to say that
he would never go to any social gathering except those of his precise
social equals, because he was afraid of making mistakes of etiquette.
Etiquette is not a matter of principle; it was not one of the things of
which Moses saw the pattern in the Mount! The only rule is not to be
pretentious or assuming, not to claim that one's efforts are
necessarily worthy of admiration and attention.

There is a better reason too. Orthodoxy in art is merely compliance
with the instinctive methods of great artists, and no one ever
succeeded in art who did not make a method of his own. Originality is
like a fountain-head of fresh water; orthodoxy is too often only the
unimpeachable fluid of the water company. The best hope for the art
and literature of a nation is that men should try to represent and
express things that they have thought beautiful in an individual way.
They do not always succeed, it is true; sometimes they fail for lack of
force, sometimes for lack of a sympathetic audience. I have found, in
the case of this book, a good deal of sincere sympathy; and where it
fails, it fails through lack of force to express thoughts that I have
felt with a profound intensity. I have had critics who have frankly
disliked the book, and I do not in the least quarrel with them for
expressing their opinion; but one does not write solely for the
critics; and on the other hand, I can humbly and gratefully say that I
have received many me