onths and months had been wasted in
apathy. Each day he dreamt of a new lease of energy and courage to begin
on the morrow; but, after making his bed and clearing away his breakfast
and purchasing his food for the day, he would find himself dejected and
incapable of a single stroke.

And yet he could not wholly realise the change that had come over the
scene. He rubbed his eyes sometimes, as if expecting to awake from an
unhappy dream. Was not the flourish of early trumpets still in his ears?
The dazzle of admiration still on his retina? The gush of extensive and
important family connections still tickling his self-esteem? The
sweeter approval of a superior art-clique still flattering his deeper
vanity?

He had been born with a silver spoon; his childhood and youth had been
ideally happy. From the playing-fields of Eton he had passed to the
quadrangles of Oxford. A distinguished student of his college?--not in
the ordinary grooves; yet favourably known as an intellect with
enthusiasms. Phidias was more of an inspiration to him than Aristotle;
Titian more actual than Todhunter. Ruskin, Pater, Turner, had stirred
him; left his mind subdued to their colours. From boyhood had been his
the swift skill with pencil that ran as easily to grace as to mockery.
And, left early arbiter of his own existence, with gold enough for
freedom, he had made for the one career that called to him.

Genius cannot prove itself at a stroke: it has its adventurings to make.
Seldom it realises at the outset that it is adventuring in the dark,
therein to grope as best it may to self-discovery. Even this first stage
may be long deferred; yet, however sure of himself at last, the artist
has still to tread the unending road with the great light of
self-realisation ever in the distance. There are the years of strenuous
search, of faithful labour; of bitterest failure on failure to bring the
deep, mysterious impulses to bloom and fruition. But there is yet
another, if independent, adventuring. The great light that crowns the
artist's journey shines only in his own spirit. The world sees and knows
nothing of it. He has none the less to find his way into that other
light--the lurid, mocking limelight of the world's acceptance; to seek a
place beside or beneath the charlatan. This is the bitterest stage of
all--- to stand shivering in marketplaces that are knee-deep with dung
and offal; to be upholding precious things to the vision of swine. What
wonder