was not. I have said I
possessed no artistic facility, but I did not say faculty, my drawing was
never common; it was individual in feeling, it was refined. I possessed all
the rarer qualities, but not that primary power without which all is
valueless;--I mean the talent of the boy who can knock off a clever
caricature of his schoolmaster or make a _life-like_ sketch of his
favourite horse on the barn door with a piece of chalk.

The following week Marshall made a great deal of progress; I thought the
model did not suit me, and hoped for better luck next time. That time never
came, and at the end of the first month I was left toiling hopelessly in
the distance. Marshall's mind, though shallow, was bright, and he
understood with strange ease all that was told him, and was able to put
into immediate practice the methods of work inculcated by the professors.
In fact, he showed himself singularly capable of education; little could be
drawn out, but a great deal could be put in (using the word in its modern,
not in its original sense). He showed himself intensely anxious to learn
and to accept all that was said: the ideas and feelings of others ran into
him like water into a bottle whose neck is suddenly stooped below the
surface of the stream. He was an ideal pupil. It was Marshall here, it was
Marshall there, and soon the studio was little but an agitation in praise
of him, and his work, and anxious speculation arose as to the medals he
would obtain. I continued the struggle for nine months. I was in the studio
at eight in the morning; I measured my drawing; I plumbed it throughout; I
sketched in, having regard to _la jambe qui porte_; I modelled _par
les masses_. During breakfast I considered how I should work during the
afternoon; at night I lay awake thinking of what I might do to attain a
better result. But my efforts availed me nothing; it was like one who,
falling, stretches his arms for help and grasps the yielding air. How
terrible are the languors and yearnings of impotence! how wearing! what an
aching void they leave in the heart! And all this I suffered until the
burden of unachieved desire grew intolerable.

I laid down my charcoal and said, "I will never draw or paint again." That
vow I have kept.

Surrender brought relief, but my life seemed at an end. I looked upon a
blank space of years desolate as a grey and sailless sea. "What shall I
do?" I asked myself, and my heart was weary and hopeless. Literature?