s of nouns and verbs; his inspiration has gone. He
cannot invoke it, cannot restrain it, cannot retain it, cannot recall
it, and only very slightly control it."

"Ha!" said my father reflectively, going on with his soup, "deuced
inconvenient."

"Inconvenient it may be," I said quietly. "All the same, that which is
written under inspiration is the only stuff worth reading. The Greeks
expressed the peculiar feeling that a man has when his inspiration
comes upon him by the phrase, entheos eimi, and we can hardly find a
better one, only unfortunately we don't believe in gods. Otherwise,
entheos eimi contains everything, for the man who was only common clay
before his inspiration, and will be common clay when it departs, feels,
for the time, as if a god had descended, and was within him. And when,
afterwards, he looks at what he has written he feels it is something
not wholly his own, but that it is the work of some powerful influence
he can hardly comprehend, and cannot certainly rule."

"But really I don't see that this has much relation to what I said
about your writing something to please the British public!"

"It is the whole gist of the matter," I said. "I am proving to you that
I am, to a certain extent, helpless in what I write; that it is
impossible for me to think of publics, British or otherwise, of
publishers or critics, when I am writing. I have no time to consider
them, no space in my brain for them, no memory that such things, or
anything outside of what I am describing, exists even. My only thought
is to drive along my pen fast enough, in obedience to the strenuous
impulse urging me. I do not 'make up,' as your phrase is, anything. I
simply put down on paper, as fast as I can, the thoughts that are
pouring into my brain, like the waves of a flood flowing over it. I am
whirled away on the stream myself; my identity is lost, submerged. Now
look here, I'll give you a cut and dried instance which will make clear
how it is that I offend the prejudices, or the proprieties, or whatever
you call it, in my books; at least I imagine it is in this way: Suppose
I have a death scene to write. My MS. is waiting for that to complete
it. I don't say to myself beforehand, Now there shall be a bed with
Tomkins dying in it; there shall be Maria at the left-hand corner, and
Jane at the right. The wife and doctor shall be grouped artistically at
the foot. Tomkins shall make two speeches before he dies; no,
three--three is mor