*
Style is the invariable mark of any master; and for the
student who does not aspire so high as to be numbered with
the giants, it is still the one quality in which he may
improve himself at will. Passion, wisdom, creative force,
the power of mystery or colour, are allotted in the hour of
birth, and can be neither learned nor stimulated. But the
just and dexterous use of what qualities we have, the
proportion of one part to another and to the whole, the
elision of the useless, the accentuation of the important,
and the preservation of a uniform character end to end--
these, which taken together constitute technical
perfection, are to some degree within the reach of industry
and intellectual courage.
*
The love of words and not a desire to publish new
discoveries, the love, of form and not a novel reading of
historical events, mark the vocation of the writer and the
painter.
*
The life of the apprentice to any art is both unstrained
and pleasing; it is strewn with small successes in the
midst of a career of failure, patiently supported; the
heaviest scholar is conscious of a certain progress; and if
he come not appreciably nearer to the art of Shakespeare,
grows letter-perfect in the domain of A-B, ab.
*
The fortune of a tale lies not alone in the skill of him
that writes, but as much, perhaps, in the inherited
experience of him who reads; and when I hear with a
particular thrill of things that I have never done or seen,
it is one of that innumerable army of my ancestors
rejoicing in past deeds.
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