ards a disposition to become silently but unmistakeably sceptical
of his power to repeat it. Subsequent effort in such a case is rarely
regarded with that confidence which might be looked for as the reward
of achievement, and which goes far to prepare the mind for the ready
acceptance of any genuine triumph. Indeed, a jealous attitude is often
unconsciously adopted, involving a demand for special qualities, for
which, perchance, the peculiar character of the past success has created
an appetite, or obedience to certain arbitrary tests, which, though
passively present in the recognised work, have grown mainly out of
critical analysis of it, and are neither radical nor essential. Where,
moreover, such conspicuous success has been followed by an interval
of years distinguished by no signal effort, the sceptical bias of the
public mind sometimes complacently settles into a conviction (grateful
alike to its pride and envy, whilst consciously hurtful to its more
generous impulses), that the man who made it lived once indeed upon the
mountains, but has at length come down to dwell finally upon the plain.
Literary biography furnishes abundant examples of this imperfection
of character, a foible, indeed, which in its multiform manifestations,
probably goes as far as anything else to interfere with the formation of
a just and final judgment of an author's merit within his own lifetime.
When it goes the length of affirming that even a great writer's creative
activity usually finds not merely central realisation, but absolute
exhaustion within the limits of some single work, to reason against it
is futile, and length of time affords it the only satisfying refutation.
One would think that it could scarcely require to be urged that creative
impulse, once existent within a mind, can never wholly depart from it,
but must remain to the end, dependent, perhaps, for its expression in
some measure on external promptings, variable with the variations of
physical environments, but always gathering innate strength for the
hour (silent perchance, or audible only within other spheres), when the
inventive faculty shall be harmonised, animated, and lubricated to
its utmost height. Nevertheless, Coleridge encountered the implied
doubtfulness of his contemporaries, that the gift remained with him
to carry to its completion the execution of that most subtle mid-day
witchery, which, as begun in _Christabel_, is probably the most
difficult and elusive t