secured the ear of the world, one is inclined to fancy that no life could
be happier. Such a man seems to live on the finest of the wheat. If a
poet, he is continually singing; if a novelist, he is supreme in his
ideal world; if a humourist, everything smiles back upon his smile; if an
essayist, he is continually saying the wisest, most memorable things. He
breathes habitually the serener air which ordinary mortals can only at
intervals respire, and in their happiest moments. Such conceptions of
great writers are to some extent erroneous. Through the medium of their
books we know them only in their active mental states,--in their
triumphs; we do not see them when sluggishness has succeeded the effort
which was delight. The statue does not come to her white limbs all at
once. It is the bronze wrestler, not the flesh and blood one, that
stands forever over a fallen adversary with pride of victory on his face.
Of the labour, the weariness, the self-distrust, the utter despondency of
the great writer, we know nothing. Then, for the attainment of mere
happiness or contentment, any high faculty of imagination is a
questionable help. Of course imagination lights the torch of joy, it
deepens the carmine on the sleek cheek of the girl, it makes wine
sparkle, makes music speak, gives rays to the rising sun. But in all its
supreme sweetnesses there is a perilous admixture of deceit, which is
suspected even at the moment when the senses tingle keenliest. And it
must be remembered that this potent faculty can darken as well as
brighten. It is the very soul of pain. While the trumpets are blowing
in Ambition's ear, it whispers of the grave. It drapes Death in austere
solemnities, and surrounds him with a gloomy court of terrors. The life
of the imaginative man is never a commonplace one: his lights are
brighter, his glooms are darker, than the lights and gloom of the vulgar.
His ecstasies are as restless as his pains. The great writer has this
perilous faculty in excess; and through it he will, as a matter of
course, draw out of the atmosphere of circumstance surrounding him the
keenness of pleasure and pain. To my own notion, the best gifts of the
gods are neither the most glittering nor the most admired. These gifts I
take to be, a moderate ambition, a taste for repose with circumstances
favourable thereto, a certain mildness of passion, an even-beating pulse,
an even-beating heart. I do not consider heroes and cele