empt of reviewers! How hard it is to put oneself
inside the crushing sense of failure that haunted Keats' last days,
with death staring him in the face! Of course, one may say that a
writer ought not to depend upon any consciousness of fame; that he
ought to make his work as good as he can, and not care about the
verdict. That is a fine and dignified philosophy; but at the same time
half of the essence of the writer's work lies in its appeal. He may
feel the beauty of the world with a poignant emotion; but his work is
to make others feel it too, and it is impossible that he should not be
profoundly discouraged if there is no one who heeds his voice. It is
not that he craves for stupid and conventional praise from men who can
only applaud when they see others applauding. What he desires is to
express the kinship, the enthusiasm of generous hearts, to make an echo
in the souls of a few like-minded people. He may desire this--nay, he
must desire it, if he is to fulfil his own ideal at all. For in the
minds of poets there is the hope of achievement, of creation; he
dedicates time and thought and endeavour to his work, and the test of
its fineness and of its worth is that it should move others. If a man
cannot have some faint hope that he is doing this, then he had better
sink back into the crowd, live the life of the world, earn a wage, make
a place for himself. Indeed, he has no justification for refusing to
shoulder the accustomed burden, unless he is sure that the task to
which he devotes himself is better worth the doing; a poet must always
be haunted by the suspicion that he is but pleasing himself and playing
indolently at a pretty game, unless he can believe that he is adding
something to the sum of beauty and truth. These visions of the poet are
very faint and delicate things; there is little of robust confidence
about them, while there are plenty of loud and insistent voices on
every side of him to tell him that he is shirking the work of the
world, and that he is not lifting a finger in the cause of humanity and
progress. There are some self-conscious artists who would say that the
cause of humanity and progress is not the concern of the artist at all;
but, on the other hand, you will find but few of the great artists of
the ages who have not been thrilled and haunted with the deep desire to
help others, to increase their peace and joy, to interpret the riddle
of the world, to give a motive for living a fuller life