an impression conveyed through the
senses; and, in fact, it cannot be made in any other way, because
temperament, whether individual or collective, is not amenable to
persuasion. All art, therefore, appeals primarily to the senses, and the
artistic aim when expressing itself in written words must also make its
appeal through the senses, if its highest desire is to reach the
secret spring of responsive emotions. It must strenuously aspire to the
plasticity of sculpture, to the colour of painting, and to the magic
suggestiveness of music--which is the art of arts. And it is only through
complete, unswerving devotion to the perfect blending of form and
substance; it is only through an unremitting never-discouraged care
for the shape and ring of sentences that an approach can be made to
plasticity, to colour, and that the light of magic suggestiveness may be
brought to play for an evanescent instant over the commonplace surface
of words: of the old, old words, worn thin, defaced by ages of careless
usage.

The sincere endeavour to accomplish that creative task, to go as far on
that road as his strength will carry him, to go undeterred by faltering,
weariness or reproach, is the only valid justification for the worker
in prose. And if his conscience is clear, his answer to those who in
the fulness of a wisdom which looks for immediate profit, demand
specifically to be edified, consoled, amused; who demand to be promptly
improved, or encouraged, or frightened, or shocked, or charmed, must
run thus:--My task which I am trying to achieve is, by the power of the
written word to make you hear, to make you feel--it is, before all, to
make you see. That--and no more, and it is everything. If I succeed, you
shall find there according to your deserts: encouragement, consolation,
fear, charm--all you demand--and, perhaps, also that glimpse of truth for
which you have forgotten to ask. To snatch in a moment of courage,
from the remorseless rush of time, a passing phase of life, is only the
beginning of the task. The task approached in tenderness and faith is
to hold up unquestioningly, without choice and without fear, the rescued
fragment before all eyes in the light of a sincere mood. It is to show
its vibration, its colour, its form; and through its movement, its form,
and its colour, reveal the substance of its truth--disclose its inspiring
secret: the stress and passion within the core of each convincing
moment. In a single-minded