m, and that the subject
may be one which is of a widespread interest. But there are innumerable
chances against him. Either the fibre of his mind is commonplace; or he
is born out of his due time, when men are not interested in what are
his chief preoccupations; or he may miss his subject; or he may be
stiff, ungainly, puerile in expression.

All of these are our literary failures, and life is likely to be for
them a bitter business. I am speaking, of course, of men who embrace
the matter seriously; and the misery of their position is that they
will be confounded with the dilettantes and amateurs who take up
literature as a fancy or as a hobby, or for even less worthy motives.

A man such as I have described, who has the passion for authorship, and
who fails in the due combination of gifts, must face the possibility of
being regarded as a worse than useless being; as unpractical, childish,
slipshod, silly, worth no one's attention. He is happy, however, if he
can find a solace in his own work, and if he is sustained by a
hopefulness that makes light of results, if he finds pleasure in the
mere doing of unrecognised work.

And thus, in my own case, I have no choice, I must perfect my medium as
far as I can, and I must look diligently for a congenial subject. I
must not allow myself to be discouraged by advice, however kindly and
well-intentioned, to devote myself to some more dignified task. For if
I can but see the truth, and say it perfectly, these writings, which it
is so easy to call ephemeral, will become vital and enriching. It is
not the subject that gives dignity; it is not wholly the treatment
either; it is a sort of fortunate union of the two, the temperament of
the writer exactly fitting the mould of his subject--no less and no
more.

In saying this I am not claiming to be a Walter Scott or a Charles
Lamb. But I can imagine a friend of the latter imploring him not to
waste his time, with his critical gifts, upon writing slender, trifling
essays; and I maintain that if Charles Lamb knew that such essays were
the work that he did best, with ease and delight, he had the right to
rebuff the hand that held out a volume of Marlowe and begged him to
annotate it. What spoils our hold on life for so many of us is this
false sense of conventional dignity. In art there is no great and
small. Whatever a mind can conceive clearly and express beautifully,
that is good art, whether it be a harrowing tragedy in which murd