People confound literature and article-dealing because the plant in both
cases is similar, but no two things can be more distinct. Neither the
question of money nor that of friend or foe can enter into literature
proper. Here, right feeling—or good taste, if this expression be
preferred—is alone considered. If a bona fide writer thinks a thing
wants saying, he will say it as tersely, clearly and elegantly as he can.
The question whether it will do him personally good or harm, or how it
will affect this or that friend, never enters his head, or, if it does,
it is instantly ordered out again. The only personal gratifications
allowed him (apart, of course, from such as are conceded to every one,
writer or no) are those of keeping his good name spotless among those
whose opinion is alone worth having and of maintaining the highest
traditions of a noble calling. If a man lives in fear and trembling lest
he should fail in these respects, if he finds these considerations alone
weigh with him, if he never writes without thinking how he shall best
serve good causes and damage bad ones, then he is a genuine man of
letters. If in addition to this he succeeds in making his manner
attractive, he will become a classic. He knows this. He knows, although
the Greeks in their mythology forgot to say so, that Conceit was saved to
mankind as well as Hope when Pandora clapped the lid on to her box.
With the article-dealer, on the other hand, money is, and ought to be,
the first consideration. Literature is an art; article-writing, when a
man is paid for it, is a trade and none the worse for that; but
pot-boilers are one thing and genuine pictures are another. People have
indeed been paid for some of the most genuine pictures ever painted, and
so with music, and so with literature itself—hard-and-fast lines ever cut
the fingers of those who draw them—but, as a general rule, most lasting
art has been poorly paid, so far as money goes, till the artist was near
the end of his time, and, whether money passed or no, we may be sure that
it was not thought of. Such work is done as a bird sings—for the love of
the thing; it is persevered in as long as body and soul can be kept
together, whether there be pay or no, and perhaps better if there be no
pay.
Nevertheless, though art disregards money and trade disregards art, the
artist may stand not a little trade-alloy and be even toughened by it,
and the tradesmen may be more than half an artist. Art is in the world
but not of it; it lives in a kingdom of its own, governed by laws that
none but artists can understand. This, at least, is the ideal towards
which an artist tends, though we all very well know we none of us reach
it. With the trade it is exactly the reverse; this world is, and ought
to be, everything, and the invisible world is as little to the trade as
this visible world is to the artist.
When I say the artist tends towards such a world, I mean not that he
tends consciously and reasoningly but that his instinct to take this
direction will be too strong to let him take any other. He is incapable
of reasoning on the subject; if he could reason he would be lost _qua_
artist; for, by every test that reason can apply, those who sell
themselves for a price are in the right. The artist is guided by a faith
that for him transcends all reason. Granted that this faith has been in
great measure founded on reason, that it has grown up along with reason,
that if it lose touch with reason it is no longer faith but madness;
granted, again, that reason is in great measure founded on faith, that it
has grown up along with faith, that if it lose touch with faith it is no
longer reason but mechanism; granted, therefore, that faith grows with
reason as will with power, as demand with supply, as mind with body, each
stimulating and augmenting the other until an invisible, minute nucleus
attains colossal growth—nevertheless the difference between the man of
the world and the man who lives by faith is that the first is drawn
towards the one and the second towards the other of two principles which,
so far as we can see, are co-extensive and co-equal in importance.