blame. It stands to reason that a young man's work cannot be perfect. It
_must_ be more or less ignorant; it must be more or less feeble; it is
likely that it may be more or less experimental, and if experimental,
here and there mistaken. If, therefore, you allow yourself to launch out
into sudden barking at the first faults you see, the probability is that
you are abusing the youth for some defect naturally and inevitably
belonging to that stage of his progress; and that you might just as
rationally find fault with a child for not being as prudent as a privy
councillor, or with a kitten for not being as grave as a cat.

25. But there is one fault which you may be quite sure is unnecessary,
and therefore a real and blamable fault: that is haste, involving
negligence. Whenever you see that a young man's work is either bold or
slovenly, then you may attack it firmly; sure of being right. If his
work is bold, it is insolent; repress his insolence: if it is slovenly,
it is indolent; spur his indolence. So long as he works in that dashing
or impetuous way, the best hope for him is in your contempt: and it is
only by the fact of his seeming not to seek your approbation that you
may conjecture he deserves it.

26. But if he does deserve it, be sure that you give it him, else you
not only run a chance of driving him from the right road by want of
encouragement, but you deprive yourselves of the happiest privilege you
will ever have of rewarding his labour. For it is only the young who can
receive much reward from men's praise: the old, when they are great, get
too far beyond and above you to care what you think of them. You may
urge them then with sympathy, and surround them then with acclamation;
but they will doubt your pleasure, and despise your praise. You might
have cheered them in their race through the asphodel meadows of their
youth; you might have brought the proud, bright scarlet into their
faces, if you had but cried once to them "Well done," as they dashed up
to the first goal of their early ambition. But now, their pleasure is in
memory, and their ambition is in heaven. They can be kind to you, but
you nevermore can be kind to them. You may be fed with the fruit and
fulness of their old age, but you were as the nipping blight to them in
their blossoming, and your praise is only as the warm winds of autumn
to the dying branches.

27. There is one thought still, the saddest of all, bearing on this
withholdi