each other for the first time, just as in the first glance exchanged by lovers, the unborn child opens its eyes on the world, and pleads for life.  But thought, although it may indulge itself with the fancy of a predestined affiance, is not confined to one mate, but roves free and is the father of many children.  A belief in the inevitable word is the last refuge of that stubborn mechanical theory of the universe which has been slowly driven from science, politics, and history.  Amidst so much that is undulating, it has pleased writers to imagine that truth persists and is provided by heavenly munificence with an imperishable garb of language.  But this also is vanity, there is one end appointed alike to all, fact goes the way of fiction, and what is known is no more perdurable than what is made.  Not words nor works, but only that which is formless endures, the vitality that is another name for change, the breath that fills and shatters the bubbles of good and evil, of beauty and deformity, of truth and untruth.

No art is easy, least of all the art of letters.  Apply the musical analogy once more to the instrument whereon literature performs its voluntaries.  With a living keyboard of notes which are all incessantly changing in value, so that what rang true under Dr. Johnson’s hand may sound flat or sharp now, with a range of a myriad strings, some falling mute and others being added from day to day, with numberless permutations and combinations, each of which alters the tone and pitch of the units that compose it, with fluid ideas that never have an outlined existence until they have found their phrases and the improvisation is complete, is it to be wondered at that the art of style is eternally elusive, and that the attempt to reduce it to rule is the forlorn hope of academic infatuation?

These difficulties and complexities of the instrument are, nevertheless, the least part of the ordeal that is to be undergone by the writer.  The same musical note or phrase affects different ears in much the same way; not so the word or group of words.  The pure idea, let us say, is translated into language by the literary composer; who is to be responsible for the retranslation of the language into idea?  Here begins the story of the troubles and weaknesses that are imposed upon literature by the necessity it lies under of addressing itself to an audience, by its liability to anticipate the corruptions that mar the understanding of the spoken or written word.  A word is the operative symbol of a relation between two minds, and is chosen by the one not without regard to the quality of the effect actually produced upon the other.  Men must be spoken to in their accustomed tongue, and persuaded that the unknown God proclaimed by the poet is one whom aforetime they ignorantly worshipped.  The relation of great authors to the public may be compared to the war of the sexes, a quiet watchful antagonism between two parties mutually