h heartily it were. But the truth is
one; it has first to be discovered, then justly and exactly uttered.
Even with instruments specially contrived for such a purpose--with a
foot-rule, a level, or a theodolite--it is not easy to be exact; it is
easier, alas! to be inexact. From those who mark the divisions on a
scale to those who measure the boundaries of empires or the distance of
the heavenly stars, it is by careful method and minute, unwearying
attention that men rise even to material exactness or to sure knowledge
even of external and constant things. But it is easier to draw the
outline of a mountain than the changing appearance of a face; and truth
in human relations is of this more intangible and dubious order: hard to
seize, harder to communicate. Veracity to facts in a loose, colloquial
sense--not to say that I have been in Malabar when as a matter of fact I
was never out of England, not to say that I have read Cervantes in the
original when, as a matter of fact, I know not one syllable of
Spanish--this, indeed, is easy and to the same degree unimportant in
itself. Lies of this sort, according to circumstances, may or may not be
important; in a certain sense even they may or may not be false. The
habitual liar may be a very honest fellow, and live truly with his wife
and friends; while another man who never told a formal falsehood in his
life may yet be himself one lie--heart and face, from top to bottom.
This is the kind of lie which poisons intimacy. And, _vice versa_,
veracity to sentiment, truth in a relation, truth to your own heart and
your friends, never to feign or falsify emotion--that is the truth which
makes love possible and mankind happy.

_L'art de bien dire_ is but a drawing-room accomplishment unless it be
pressed into the service of the truth. The difficulty of literature is
not to write, but to write what you mean; not to affect your reader, but
to affect him precisely as you wish. This is commonly understood in the
case of books or set orations; even in making your will, or writing an
explicit letter, some difficulty is admitted by the world. But one thing
you can never make Philistine natures understand; one thing, which yet
lies on the surface, remains as unseizable to their wits as a high
flight of metaphysics--namely, that the business of life is mainly
carried on by means of this difficult art of literature, and according
to a man's proficiency in that art shall be the freedom and the fu