ght
to have contrived to make myself into a better writer; and it might be
thought that there is something either grotesque or pathetic in so much
emotional enjoyment issuing in so slender a performance. But the
essence of the happiness is that the joy resides in the doing of the
work and not in the giving it to the world; and though I do not pretend
not to be fully alive to the delight of having my work praised and
appreciated, that is altogether a secondary pleasure which in no way
competes with the luxury of expression.

I am not ungrateful for this delight; it may, I know, be withdrawn from
me; but meanwhile the world seems to be full to the brim of expressive
and significant things. There is a beautiful old story of a saint who
saw in a vision a shining figure approaching him, holding in his hand a
dark and cloudy globe. He held it out, and the saint looking
attentively upon it, saw that it appeared to represent the earth in
miniature; there were the continents and seas, with clouds sweeping
over them; and, for all that it was so minute, he could see cities and
plains, and little figures moving to and fro. The angel laid his
finger on a part of the globe, and detached from it a small cluster of
islands, drawing them out of the sea; and the saint saw that they were
peopled by a folk, whom he knew, in some way that he could not wholly
understand, to be dreary and uncomforted. He heard a voice saying,
"_He taketh up the isles as a very small thing_"; and it darted into
his mind that his work lay with the people of those sad islands; that
he was to go thither, and speak to them a message of hope.

It is a beautiful story; and it has always seemed to me that the work
of the artist is like that. He is to detach from the great peopled
globe what little portion seems to appeal to him most; and he must then
say what he can to encourage and sustain men, whatever thoughts of joy
and hope come most home to him in his long and eager pilgrimage.

XIX

Hamlet

We were talking yesterday about the stage, a subject in which I am
ashamed to confess I take but a feeble interest, though I fully
recognise the appeal of the drama to certain minds, and its
possibilities. One of the party, who had all his life been a great
frequenter of theatres, turned to me and said: "After all, there is one
play which seems to be always popular, and to affect all audiences, the
poor, the middle-class, the cultivated, alike--_Hamlet_."