There is no excuse for amateur work being bad. Amateurs often excuse
their shortcomings on the ground that they are not professionals, the
professional could plead with greater justice that he is not an amateur.
The professional has not, he might well say, the leisure and freedom from
money anxieties which will let him devote himself to his art in
singleness of heart, telling of things as he sees them without fear of
what man shall say unto him; he must think not of what appears to him
right and loveable but of what his patrons will think and of what the
critics will tell his patrons to say they think; he has got to square
everyone all round and will assuredly fail to make his way unless he does
this; if, then, he betrays his trust he does so under temptation.
Whereas the amateur who works with no higher aim than that of immediate
recognition betrays it from the vanity and wantonness of his spirit. The
one is naughty because he is needy, the other from natural depravity.
Besides, the amateur can keep his work to himself, whereas the
professional man must exhibit or starve.
The question is what is the amateur an amateur of? What is he really in
love with? Is he in love with other people, thinking he sees something
which he would like to show them, which he feels sure they would enjoy if
they could only see it as he does, which he is therefore trying as best
he can to put before the few nice people whom he knows? If this is his
position he can do no wrong, the spirit in which he works will ensure
that his defects will be only as bad spelling or bad grammar in some
pretty saying of a child. If, on the other hand, he is playing for
social success and to get a reputation for being clever, then no matter
how dexterous his work may be, it is but another mode of the speaking
with the tongues of men and angels without charity; it is as sounding
brass or a tinkling cymbal, full of sound and fury signifying nothing.