Technic is most successful when its existence is least suspected, and this is one reason why it is often overlooked and neglected in the very achievements which owe to its aid their vitality.  Perhaps this happens the more frequently because it is the affectation of many an artist to hurry his tools out of sight as swiftly as he can, and to sweep up the chips of his workshop as soon as may be, so that the result of his effort shall seem almost as if it were the sudden effect of the inspiration that is believed to visit a genius now and again.  He may have toiled at it unceasingly for months, joying in the labor and finding keen pleasure in every workmanlike artifice he had used to attain his end; and yet he refrains from confessing his many struggles with his rebellious material, wisely preferring to let what he has done speak for itself, simply and without commentary.  But the artists know that the pathway to achievement is never along the line of least resistance; and they smile when they hear Mascarille, in Moliere’s little comedy, tell the affected young ladies whom he is seeking to impress that all he did “was done without effort.”  By this the artists at once perceive the fellow to be a pretender, who had never accomplished anything and who never would.  They know, as no others can know, that there is no cable-road to the tops of the twin-peaks of Parnassus, and that he who would climb to these remote heights must trudge afoot,—­even if he is lucky enough now and again to get a lift on Pegasus.

What the artists do not care to parade, it is the duty of the commentators to point out; and an understanding of the technic of any art, of its possibilities and of its limitations, is as necessary for the critics as for the creators.  Perhaps it is not pedantic to suggest that the critic who seeks to be of service ought to be able to see in every masterpiece the result of the combined action of three forces, without any one of which that work of art could not have come into being.  First, there is the temperament of the artist himself, his native endowment for the practise of that special art, his gift of story-telling or of play-making, as the case may be.  Second, there is the training of the artist, his preparation for his work, his slowly acquired mastery of the processes of his craft, his technical accomplishments.  And, thirdly, there is the man’s own character, his intelligence, and energy, and determination, his moral sense, his attitude toward life and its insistent problems.  Now, of these three necessary factors—­first, his native gift; second, his technic; and, third, his character—­only the second is improvable by taking thought.  The native gift must remain ever what it is, neither more nor less; and it cannot be enlarged by any effort of will.  So also the character, which is conditioned by much that is beyond a man’s control,—­which can be bettered, perhaps, but only as the man himself climbs upward.