f subordinating accessories,
of seeing which minister to the innermost impression, and which
distract and blur. An artist who creates a great character need not
necessarily even desire to attain the great qualities which he
discerns; he sees them, as he sees the vertebrae of the mountain ridge
under pasture and woodland, as he sees the structure of the tree under
its mist of green; but to see beauty is not necessarily to desire it;
for, as in the mountain and the tree, it may have no ethical
significance at all, only a symbolical meaning. The best art is
inspired more by an intellectual force than by a vital sympathy. Of
course to succeed as a novelist in England to-day, one must have a dash
of the moralist, because an English audience is far more preoccupied
with moral ideals than with either intellectual or artistic ideals. The
reading public desires that love should be loyal rather than
passionate; it thinks ultimate success a more impressive thing than
ultimate failure; it loves sadness as a contrast and preface to
laughter. It prefers that the patriarch Job should end by having a nice
new family of children and abundant flocks, rather than that he should
sink into death among the ashes, refusing to curse God for his
reverses. Its view of existence after death is that Dives should join
Lazarus in Abraham's bosom. To succeed, one must compromise with this
comfortable feeing, sacrificing, if needs be, the artistic conscience,
because the place of the minstrel in England is after the banquet, when
the warriors are pleasantly tired, have put off the desire of meat and
drink, and the fire roars and crackles in the hearth. When Ruskin
deserted his clouds and peaks, his sunsets and sunrises, and devoured
his soul over the brutalities and uglinesses and sordid inequalities of
life, it was all put down to the obscure pressure of mental disease.
Ophelia does not sob and struggle in the current, but floats dreamily
to death in a bed of meadow-flowers.

October 21, 1888.

Let me try to recollect for my own amusement how it was that my last
book grew up and took shape. How well I remember the day and the hour
when the first thought came to me! Some one was dining here, and told a
story about a friend of his, and an unhappy misunderstanding between
him and a girl whom he loved, or thought he loved. A figure, two
figures, a scene, a conversation, came into my head, absolutely and
perfectly life-like. I lay awake half the nig