th
them, that it does not occur to him to depict those qualities. I am not
sure that the best equipment for an artist is not that he should see
and admire great and noble and beautiful things, and feel his own
deficiency in them acutely, desiring them with the desire of the moth
for the star. The best characters in my own books have been, I am sure,
the people least like myself, because the creation of a character that
one whole-heartedly admires, and that yet is far out of one's reach, is
the most restful and delightful thing in the world. If one is unready
in speech, thinking of one's epigrams three hours after the occasion
for them has arisen, how pleasant to draw the man who says the neat,
witty, appropriate, consoling thing! If one suffers from timidity, from
meanness, from selfishness, what a delight to depict the man who is
brave, generous, unselfish! Of course the quality of a man's mind flows
into and over his work, but that is rather like the varnish of the
picture than its tints--it is the medium rather than the design. The
artistic creation of ideal situations is often a sort of refuge to the
man who knows that he makes a mess of the beautiful and simple
relations of life. The artist is fastidious and moody, feeling the
pressure of strained nerves and tired faculties, easily discouraged,
disgusted by the superficial defect, the tiny blot that spoils alike
the noble character, the charming prospect, the attractive face. He
sees, let us say, a person with a beautiful face and an ugly hand. The
normal person thinks of the face and forgets the hand. The artist
thinks with pain of the hand and forgets the face. He desires an
impossible perfection, and flies for safety to the little world that he
can make and sway. That is why artists, as a rule, love twilight hours,
shaded rooms, half-tones, subdued hues, because what is common,
staring, tasteless, is blurred and hidden. Men of rich vitality are
generally too much occupied with life as it is, its richness, its
variety, its colour and fragrance, to think wistfully of life as it
might be. The unbridled, sensuous, luxurious strain, that one finds in
so many artists, comes from a lack of moral temperance, a snatching at
delights. They fear dreariness and ugliness so much that they welcome
any intoxication of pleasure. But after all, it is clearness of vision
that makes the artist, the power of disentangling the central feature
from the surrounding details, the power o