representation. In that, he must pause long and toil faithfully;

that is his apprenticeship; and it is only the few who will really

grow beyond it, and go forward, fully equipped, to do the business

of real art - to give life to abstractions and significance and

charm to facts. In the meanwhile, let him dwell much among his

fellow-craftsmen. They alone can take a serious interest in the

childish tasks and pitiful successes of these years. They alone

can behold with equanimity this fingering of the dumb keyboard,

this polishing of empty sentences, this dull and literal painting

of dull and insignificant subjects. Outsiders will spur him on.

They will say, "Why do you not write a great book? paint a great

picture?" If his guardian angel fail him, they may even persuade

him to the attempt, and, ten to one, his hand is coarsened and his

style falsified for life.

And this brings me to a warning. 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. But the time comes when a

man should cease prelusory gymnastic, stand up, put a violence upon

his will, and, for better or worse, begin the business of creation.

This evil day there is a tendency continually to postpone: above

all with painters. They have made so many studies that it has

become a habit; they make more, the walls of exhibitions blush with

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