e would be a manifest fool
to trouble himself further. Genius is the recognition of the perfect line,
the perfect phrase, the perfect word, when it appears, and this perfect
line or phrase or word is quite as likely to appear in the twinkling of an
eye as after a week of vigils. But the point is that it does not
invariably so appear. It sometimes cost Flaubert three days' labour to
write one perfect sentence. Greater writers have written more hurriedly.
But this does not justify lesser writers in writing hurriedly too.

Of all the authors who have exalted the part played in literature by
inspiration as compared with labour, none has written more nobly or with
better warrant than Shelley. "The mind," he wrote in the _Defence of
Poetry_--

The mind in creation is as a fading coal, which some invisible
influence, like an inconstant wind, awakens to transitory
brightness; the power arises from within, like the colour of a
flower which fades and changes as it is developed, and the
conscious portions of our natures are unprophetic either of its
approach or its departure. Could this influence be durable in its
original purity and force, it is impossible to predict the
greatness of the results; but when composition begins, inspiration
is already on the decline, and the most glorious poetry
that has ever been communicated to the world is probably a feeble
shadow of the original conceptions of the poet. I appeal to the
greatest poets of the present day, whether it is not an error to
assert that the finest passages of poetry are produced by labour
and study.

He then goes on to interpret literally Milton's reference to _Paradise
Lost_ as an "unpremeditated song" "dictated" by the Muse, and to reply
scornfully to those "who would allege the fifty-six various readings of
the first line of the _Orlando Furioso_." Who is there who would not agree
with Shelley quickly if it were a question of having to choose between his
inspirational theory of literature and the mechanical theory of the arts
advocated by writers like Sir Joshua Reynolds? Literature without
inspiration is obviously even a meaner thing than literature without
style. But the idea that any man can become an artist by taking pains is
merely an exaggerated protest against the idea that a man can become an
artist without taking pains. Anthony Trollope, who settled down
industriously to his day's task of literature as