Poems, stories,
epigrams, all the happiest freaks of the mind, flit by on wings and
at haphazard instants. They must be caught in air. In this respect
one thinks American writers ought to have an advantage over English,
for American trousers are made with hip-pockets, in which a small
note-book may so comfortably caress the natural curvature of man.
Fancy is engendered in the eyes, said Shakespeare, and is with
gazing fed. By fancy he meant (I suppose) love; but imagination is
also so engendered. Close, constant, vivid, and compassionate gazing
at the ways of mankind is the laboratory manual of literature. But
for most of us we may gaze until our eyeballs twitch with weariness;
unless we seize and hold the flying picture in some steadfast
memorandum, the greater part of our experience dissolves away with
time. If a man has thought sufficiently about the arduous and
variously rewarded profession of literature to propose seriously to
follow it for a living, he will already have said these things to
himself, with more force and pungency. He may have satisfied himself
that he has a necessary desire for "self-expression," which is a
parlous state indeed, and the cause of much literary villainy. The
truly great writer is more likely to write in the hope of expressing
the hearts of others than his own. And there are other desires, too,
most legitimate, that he may feel.
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