d how to do
it well, and therefore he cannot love it, but perhaps he can learn to do
it well.

The wonder and glory of art is that it is without formulas. Or, rather,
each new piece of work requires the invention of new formulas, which will
not serve again for another. You must apprentice yourself afresh at
every fresh undertaking, and our mastery is always a victory over certain
unexpected difficulties, and not a dominion of difficulties overcome
before.

I believe, in other words, that mastery is merely the strength that comes
of overcoming and is never a sovereign power that smooths the path of all
obstacles. The combinations in art are infinite, and almost never the
same; you must make your key and fit it to each, and the key that unlocks
one combination will not unlock another.

VI.

There is no royal road to excellence in literature, but the young
contributor need not be dismayed at that. Royal roads are the ways that
kings travel, and kings are mostly dull fellows, and rarely have a good
time. They do not go along singing; the spring that trickles into the
mossy log is not for them, nor

"The wildwood flower that simply blows."

But the traveller on the country road may stop for each of these; and it
is not a bad condition of his progress that he must move so slowly that
he can learn every detail of the landscape, both earth and sky, by heart.

The trouble with success is that it is apt to leave life behind, or
apart. The successful writer especially is in danger of becoming
isolated from the realities that nurtured in him the strength to win
success. When he becomes famous, he becomes precious to criticism, to
society, to all the things that do not exist from themselves, or have not
the root of the matter in them.

Therefore, I think that a young writer's upward course should be slow and
beset with many obstacles, even hardships. Not that I believe in
hardships as having inherent virtues; I think it is stupid to regard them
in that way; but they oftener bring out the virtues inherent in the
sufferer from them than what I may call the 'softships'; and at least
they stop him, and give him time to think.

This is the great matter, for if we prosper forward rapidly, we have no
time for anything but prospering forward rapidly. We have no time for
art, even the art by which we prosper.

I would have the young contributor above all things realize that success
is not his concern. Good work, tr