Thus novels begin to touch not
the fine DILETTANTI but the gross mass of mankind, when
they leave off to speak of parlours and shades of manner
and still-born niceties of motive, and begin to deal with
fighting, sailoring, adventure, death or childbirth; and
thus ancient outdoor crafts and occupations, whether Mr.
Hardy wields the shepherd's crook or Count Tolstoi swings
the scythe, lift romance into a near neighbourhood with
epic. These aged things have on them the dew of man's
morning; they lie near, not so much to us, the semi-
artificial flowerets, as to the trunk and aboriginal
taproot of the race. A thousand interests spring up in the
process of the ages, and a thousand perish; that is now an
eccentricity or a lost art which was once the fashion of an
empire; and those only are perennial matters that rouse us
to-day, and that roused men in all epochs of the past.
*
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 fulness of his intercourse
with other men.
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