The great difficulty which besets us all—­Shakspeares and others, but Shakspeares less than others—–­is the difficulty of disengaging the mind from the thraldom of sensation and habit, and escaping from the pressure of objects immediately present, or of ideas which naturally emerge, linked together as they are by old associations.  We have to see anew, to think anew.  It requires great vigour to escape from the old and spontaneously recurrent trains of thought.  And as this vigour is native, not acquired, my readers may, perhaps, urge the futility of expounding with so much pains a principle of success in Literature which, however indispensable, must be useless as a guide; they may object that although good Literature rests on insight, there is nothing to be gained by saying “unless a man have the requisite insight he will not succeed.”  But there is something to be gained.  In the first place, this is an analytical inquiry into the conditions of success:  it aims at discriminating the leading principles which inevitably determine success.  In the second place, supposing our analysis of the conditions to be correct, practical guidance must follow.  We cannot, it is true, gain clearness of vision simply by recognising its necessity; but by recognising its necessity we are taught to seek for it as a primary condition of success; we are forced to come to an understanding with ourselves as to whether we have or have not a distinct vision of the thing we speak of, whether we are seers or reporters, whether the ideas and feelings have been thought and felt by us as part and parcel of our own individual experience, or have been echoed by us from the books and conversation of others?  We can always ask, are we painting farm-houses or fairies because these are genuine visions of our own, or only because farm-houses and fairies have been successfully painted by others, and are poetic material?

The man who first saw an acid redden a vegetable-blue, had something to communicate; and the man who first saw (mentally) that all acids redden vegetable-blues, had something to communicate.  But no man can do this again.  In the course of his teaching he may have frequently to report the fact; but this repetition is not of much value unless it can be made to disclose some new relation.  And so of other and more complex cases.  Every sincere man can determine for himself whether he has any authentic tidings to communicate; and although no man can hope to discover much that is actually new, he ought to assure himself that even what is old in his work has been authenticated by his own experience.  He should not even speak of acids reddening vegetable-blues upon mere hearsay, unless he is speaking figuratively.  All his facts should have been verified by himself, all his ideas should have been thought by himself.  In proportion to the fulfilment of this condition will be his success; in proportion to its non-fulfilment, his failure.

Literature in its vast extent includes writers of three different classes, and in speaking of success we must always be understood to mean the acceptance each writer gains in his own class; otherwise a flashy novelist might seem more successful than a profound poet; a clever compiler more successful than an original discoverer.