, should the open display of emotion fail
to move, then it must perish unavoidably in disgust or contempt. No
artist can be reproached for shrinking from a risk which only fools run
to meet and only genius dare confront with impunity. In a task which
mainly consists in laying one's soul more or less bare to the world, a
regard for decency, even at the cost of success, is but the regard for
one's own dignity which is inseparably united with the dignity of one's
work.

And then--it is very difficult to be wholly joyous or wholly sad on this
earth. The comic, when it is human, soon takes upon itself a face of
pain; and some of our griefs (some only, not all, for it is the capacity
for suffering which makes man august in the eyes of men) have their
source in weaknesses which must be recognised with smiling compassion as
the common inheritance of us all. Joy and sorrow in this world pass into
each other, mingling their forms and their murmurs in the twilight
of life as mysterious as an overshadowed ocean, while the dazzling
brightness of supreme hopes lies far off, fascinating and still, on the
distant edge of the horizon.

Yes! I too would like to hold the magic wand giving that command over
laughter and tears which is declared to be the highest achievement of
imaginative literature. Only, to be a great magician one must surrender
oneself to occult and irresponsible powers, either outside or within
one's own breast. We have all heard of simple men selling their
souls for love or power to some grotesque devil. The most ordinary
intelligence can perceive without much reflection that anything of the
sort is bound to be a fool's bargain. I don't lay claim to particular
wisdom because of my dislike and distrust of such transactions. It may
be my sea-training acting upon a natural disposition to keep good hold
on the one thing really mine, but the fact is that I have a positive
horror of losing even for one moving moment that full possession of
myself which is the first condition of good service. And I have carried
my notion of good service from my earlier into my later existence. I,
who have never sought in the written word anything else but a form of
the Beautiful, I have carried over that article of creed from the decks
of ships to the more circumscribed space of my desk; and by that act,
I suppose, I have become permanently imperfect in the eyes of the
ineffable company of pure esthetes.

As in political so in literary act