were
a mere compound of words, do we ever light on a line, a thought, which
is not familiar to us, or of which we have not had at least some vague
forecast?

The man who only tries to amuse his public by familiar methods, writes
confidently, in his candid mediocrity, works intended only for the
ignorant and idle crowd. But those who are conscious of the weight of
centuries of past literature, whom nothing satisfies, whom everything
disgusts because they dream of something better, to whom the bloom is
off everything, and who always are impressed with the uselessness, the
commonness of their own achievements--these come to regard literary
art as a thing unattainable and mysterious, scarcely to be detected
save in a few pages by the greatest masters.

A score of phrases suddenly discovered thrill us to the heart like a
startling revelation; but the lines which follow are just like all
other verse, the further flow of prose is like all other prose.

Men of genius, no doubt, escape this anguish and torment because they
bear within themselves an irresistible creative power. They do not sit
in judgment on themselves. The rest of us, who are no more than
persevering and conscientious workers, can only contend against
invincible discouragement by unremitting effort.

Two men by their simple and lucid teaching gave me the strength to try
again and again: Louis Bouilhet and Gustave Flaubert.

If I here speak of myself in connection with them, it is because their
counsels, as summed up in a few lines, may prove useful to some young
writers who may be less self-confident than most are when they make
their _debut_ in print. Bouilhet, whom I first came to know somewhat
intimately about two years before I gained the friendship of Flaubert,
by dint of telling me that a hundred lines--or less--if they are
without a flaw and contain the very essence of the talent and
originality of even a second-rate man, are enough to establish an
artist's reputation, made me understand that persistent toil and a
thorough knowledge of the craft, might, in some happy hour of
lucidity, power, and enthusiasm, by the fortunate occurrence of a
subject in perfect concord with the tendency of our mind, lead to the
production of a single work, short but as perfect as we can make it.
Then I learned to see that the best-known writers have hardly ever
left us more than one such volume; and that needful above all else is
the good fortune which leads us to hit