have no delusions in the matter. He must not
comfort himself with the false hope that it may turn out to be a work
of art after all. His biographer draws a terrible picture of Flaubert
pacing in his room, flinging himself upon his couch, rising to pace
again, an agonised and tortured medium, in the search of the one
perfect word. But the misery was worth it if the word was found, and
the fierce faint joy of discovery was worth all the ease and serenity
of declining upon the word that sufficed, instead of straining after
the word required.

XXIX

We artists who try to discern beauty, and endeavour to rule our lives
to be as tranquil, as perceptive, as joyful as possible, are apt to be
too impatient of the petty, mean, and sordid things with which the
fabric of life is so much interwoven--the ugly words of spiteful
people, little fretting ailments, unsympathetic criticisms, coldness
and indifference, tiresome business, wearisome persons. It is a
deep-seated mistake. We cannot cast these things away as mere debris.
They must be used, applied, accommodated. These are our materials,
which we must strive to combine and adapt. To be disgusted with them,
to allow them to disturb our serenity, is as though a painter should
sicken at the odour of his pigments and the offscourings of his
palette. The truer economy is to exclude all such elements as we can,
consistently with honour, tenderness, and courage. Then we must not be
dismayed with what remains; we must suffer it quietly and hopefully,
letting patience have her perfect work. After all it is from the soul
of the artist that his work arises; and it is through these goads and
stings, through pain and weariness joyfully embraced, that the soul
wins strength and subtlety. They are as the implements which cleave and
break up the idle fallow, and without their work there can be no
prodigal or generous sowing.

I suppose that I put into my observation of Nature--and perhaps into my
hearing of music--the same thing that many people experience only in
their relations with other people. To myself relations with others are
cheerful enough, interesting, perplexing--but seldom absorbing, or
overwhelming; such experiences never seem to say the ultimate word or
to sound the deeper depth. I suppose that this is the deficiency of the
artistic temperament. I write looking out upon a pale wintry sunset.
There, at least, is something deeper than myself. I do not suppose that
the st