be moral reasons for perseverance, and if a man feels that it is his duty to complete a work when his artistic impulse has failed him, he had better do it.  But he must 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 strange pageant of clouds and burning light, above the leafless grove, the bare fields, is set there for my delight But that I should feel its inexpressible holiness, its solemn mystery—­feel it with a sense of pure tranquillity, of satisfied desire—­is to me the sign that it holds some sacred secret for