equal merit. Noble art is nothing less than the expression of a great
soul; and great souls are not common things. If ever we confound their
work with that of others, it is not through liberality, but through
blindness.

* * * * *

Note 4th, p. 28.--"_Public favour._"

137. There is great difficulty in making any short or general statement
of the difference between great and ignoble minds in their behaviour to
the 'public.' It is by no means _universally_ the case that a mean mind,
as stated in the text, will bend itself to what you ask of it: on the
contrary, there is one kind of mind, the meanest of all, which
perpetually complains of the public, and contemplates and proclaims
itself as a 'genius,' refuses all wholesome discipline or humble office,
and ends in miserable and revengeful ruin; also, the greatest minds are
marked by nothing more distinctly than an inconceivable humility, and
acceptance of work or instruction in any form, and from any quarter.
They will learn from everybody, and do anything that anybody asks of
them, so long as it involves only toil, or what other men would think
degradation. But the point of quarrel, nevertheless, assuredly rises
some day between the public and them, respecting some matter, not of
humiliation, but of Fact. Your great man always at last comes to see
something the public don't see. This something he will assuredly persist
in asserting, whether with tongue or pencil, to be as _he_ sees it, not
as _they_ see it; and all the world in a heap on the other side, will
not get him to say otherwise. Then, if the world objects to the saying,
he may happen to get stoned or burnt for it, but that does not in the
least matter to him; if the world has no particular objection to the
saying, he may get leave to mutter it to himself till he dies, and be
merely taken for an idiot; that also does not matter to him--mutter it
he will, according to what he perceives to be fact, and not at all
according to the roaring of the walls of Red Sea on the right hand or
left of him. Hence the quarrel, sure at some time or other to be started
between the public and him; while your mean man, though he will spit and
scratch spiritedly at the public, while it does not attend to him, will
bow to it for its clap in any direction, and say anything when he has
got its ear, which he thinks will bring him another clap; and thus, as
stated in the text, he and it go on smoothly