with anything else.  I would rather be Charles Lamb than Charles XII.  I would rather be remembered by a song than by a victory.  I would rather build a fine sonnet than have built St. Paul’s.  I would rather be the discoverer of a new image than the discoverer of a new planet.  Fine phrases I value more than bank notes.  I have ear for no other harmony than the harmony of words.  To be occasionally quoted is the only fame I care for.

But what of the literary life?  How fares it with the men whose days and nights are devoted to the writing of books?  We know the famous men of letters; we give them the highest place in our regards; we crown them with laurels so thickly that we hide the furrows on their foreheads.  Yet we must remember that there are men of letters who have been equally sanguine, equally ardent, who have pursued perfection equally unselfishly, but who have failed to make themselves famous.  We know the ships that come with streaming pennons into the immortal ports; we know but little of the ships that have gone on fire on the way thither,—­that have gone down at sea.  Even with successful men we cannot know precisely how matters have gone.  We read the fine raptures of the poet, but we do not know into what kind of being he relapses when the inspiration is over, any more than, seeing and hearing the lark shrilling at the gate of heaven, we know with what effort it has climbed thither, or into what kind of nest it must descend.  The lark is not always singing; no more is the poet.  The lark is only interesting while singing; at other times it is but a plain brown bird.  We may not be able to recognise the poet when he doffs his singing robes; he may then sink to the level of his admirers.  We laugh at the fancies of the humourists, but he may have written his brilliant things in a dismal enough mood.  The writer is not continually dwelling amongst the roses and lilies of life, he is not continually uttering generous sentiments, and saying fine things.  On him, as on his brethren, the world presses with its prosaic needs.  He has to make love and marry, and run the usual matrimonial risks.  The income-tax collector visits him as well as others.  Around his head at Christmas-times drives a snow-storm of bills.  He must keep the wolf from the door, and he has only his goose-quills to confront it with.  And here it is, having to deal with alien powers, that his special temperament comes into play, and may work him evil.  Wit is not worldly wisdom.  A man gazing on the stars is proverbially at the mercy of the puddles on the road.  A man may be able to disentangle intricate problems, be able to recall the past, and yet be cozened by an ordinary knave.  The finest expression will not liquidate a butcher’s account.  If Apollo puts his name to a bill, he must meet it when it becomes due, or go into the gazette.  Armies are not always cheering on the heights which they have won; there are forced marches, occasional shortness of provisions, bivouacs on muddy plains, driving in of pickets, and the like, although these inglorious items are forgotten when we read the roll of victories inscribed on their banners.  The books of the great writer are only portions of the great writer.  His life acts on his writings; his writings react on his life.  His life may impoverish his books; his books may impoverish his life.