THE PRINCIPLE OF SINCERITY.
It is always understood as an expression of condemnation when anything
in Literature or Art is said to be done for effect; and yet to produce
an effect is the aim and end of both.
There is nothing beyond a verbal ambiguity here if we look at it
closely, and yet there is a corresponding uncertainty in the conception
of Literature and Art commonly entertained, which leads many writers
and many critics into the belief that what are called "effects" should
be sought, and when found must succeed. It is desirable to clear up
this moral ambiguity, as I may call it, and to show that the real
method of securing the legitimate effect is not to aim at it, but to
aim at the truth, relying on that for securing effect. The condemnation
of whatever is "done for effect" obviously springs from indignation at
a disclosed insincerity in the artist, who is self-convicted of having
neglected truth for the sake of our applause; and we refuse our
applause to the flatterer, or give it contemptuously as to a mountebank
whose dexterity has amused us.
It is unhappily true that much insincere Literature and Art, executed
solely with a view to effect, does succeed by deceiving the public. But
this is only because the simulation of truth or the blindness of the
public conceals the insincerity. As a maxim, the Principle of Sincerity
is admitted. Nothing but what is true, or is held to be true, can
succeed; anything which looks like insincerity is condemned. In this
respect we may compare it with the maxim of Honesty the best policy. No
far-reaching intellect fails to perceive that if all men were uniformly
upright and truthful, Life would be more victorious, and Literature
more noble. We find, however, both in Life and Literature, a practical
disregard of the truth of these propositions almost equivalent to a
disbelief in them. Many men are keenly alive to the social advantages
of honesty--in the practice of others. They are also strongly impressed
with the conviction that in their own particular case the advantage
will sometimes lie in not strictly adhering to the rule. Honesty is
doubtless the best policy in the long run; but somehow the run here
seems so very long, and a short-cut opens such allurements to impatient
desire. It requires a firm calm insight, or a noble habit of thought,
to steady the wavering mind, and direct it away from delusive
short-cuts: to make belief practice, and forego immediate triumph. Many
of those who unhesitatingly admit Sincerity to be one great condition
of success in Literature find it difficult, and often impossible, to
resist the temptation of an insincerity which promises immediate
advantage. It is not only the grocers who sand their sugar before
prayers. Writers who know well enough that the triumph of falsehood is
an unholy triumph, are not deterred from falsehood by that knowledge.
They know, perhaps, that, even if undetected, it will press on their
own consciences; but the knowledge avails them little. The immediate
pressure of the temptation is yielded to, and Sincerity remains a text
to be preached to others. To gain applause they will misstate facts, to
gain victory in argument they will misrepresent the opinions they
oppose; and they suppress the rising misgivings by the dangerous
sophism that to discredit error is good work, and by the hope that no
one will detect the means by which the work is effected. The saddest
aspect of this procedure is that in Literature, as in Life, a temporary
success often does reward dishonesty. It would be insincere to conceal
it. To gain a reputation as discoverers men will invent or suppress
facts. To appear learned they will array their writings in the
ostentation of borrowed citations. To solicit the "sweet voices" of the
crowd they will feign sentiments they do not feel, and utter what they
think the crowd will wish to hear, keeping back whatever the crowd will
hear with disapproval. And, as I said, such men often succeed for a
time; the fact is so, and we must not pretend that it is otherwise. But
it no more disturbs the fundamental truth of the Principle of
Sincerity, than the perturbations in the orbit of Mars disturb the
truth of Kepler's law.
It is impossible to deny that dishonest men often grow rich and famous,
becoming powerful in their parish or in parliament. Their portraits
simper from shop windows; and they live and die respected. This success
is theirs; yet it is not the success which a noble soul will envy.
Apart from the risk of discovery and infamy, there is the certainty of
a conscience ill at ease, or if at ease, so blunted in its
sensibilities, so given over to lower lusts, that a healthy instinct
recoils from such a state. Observe, moreover, that in Literature the
possible rewards of dishonesty are small, and the probability of
detection great. In Life a dishonest man is chiefly moved by desires
towards some tangible result of money or power; if he get these he has
got all. The man of letters has a higher aim: the very object of his
toil is to secure the sympathy and respect of men; and the rewards of
his toil may be paid in money, fame, or consciousness of earnest
effort. The first of these may sometimes be gained without Sincerity.
Fame may also, for a time, be erected on an unstable ground, though it
will inevitably be destroyed again. But the last and not least reward
is to be gained by every one without fear of failure, without risk of
change. Sincere work is good work, be it never so humble; and sincere
work is not only an indestructible delight to the worker by its very
genuineness, but is immortal in the best sense, for it lives for ever
in its influence. There is no good Dictionary, not even a good Index,
that is not in this sense priceless, for it has honestly furthered the
work of the world, saving labour to others, setting an example to
successors.
Whether I make a careful Index, or an inaccurate one, will probably in
no respect affect the money-payment I shall receive. My sins will never
fall heavily on me; my virtue will gain me neither extra pence nor
praise. I shall be hidden by obscurity from the indignation of those
whose valuable time is wasted over my pretence at accuracy, as from the
silent gratitude of those whose time is saved by my honest fidelity.
The consciousness of faithfulness even to the poor index maker may be a
better reward than pence or praise; but of course we cannot expect the
unconscientious to believe this. If I sand my sugar, and tell lies over
my counter, I may gain the rewards of dishonesty, or I may be overtaken
by its Nemesis. But if I am faithful in my work the reward cannot be
withheld from me. The obscure workers who, knowing that they will never
earn renown yet feel an honourable pride in doing their work
faithfully, may be likened to the benevolent who feel a noble delight
in performing generous actions which will never be known to be theirs,
the only end they seek in such actions being the good which is wrought
for others, and their delight being the sympathy with others.
I should be ashamed to insist on truths so little likely to be
disputed, did they not point directly at the great source of bad
Literature, which, as was said in our first chapter, springs from a
want of proper moral guidance rather than from deficiency of talent.
The Principle of Sincerity comprises all those qualities of courage,
patience, honesty, and simplicity which give momentum to talent, and
determine successful Literature. It is not enough to have the eye to
see; there must also be the courage to express what the eye has seen,
and the steadfastness of a trust in truth. Insight, imagination, grace
of style are potent; but their power is delusive unless sincerely
guided. If any one should object that this is a truism, the answer is
ready: Writers disregard its truth, as traders disregard the truism of
honesty being the best policy. Nay, as even the most upright men are
occasionally liable to swerve from the truth, so the most upright
authors will in some passages desert a perfect sincerity; yet the ideal
of both is rigorous truth. Men who are never flagrantly dishonest are
at times unveracious in small matters, colouring or suppressing facts
with a conscious purpose; and writers who never stole an idea nor
pretended to honours for which they had not striven, may be found
lapsing into small insincerities, speaking a language which is not
theirs, uttering opinions which they expect to gain applause rather
than the opinions really believed by them. But if few men are perfectly
and persistently sincere, Sincerity is nevertheless the only enduring
strength.
The principle is universal, stretching from the highest purposes of
Literature down to its smallest details. It underlies the labour of the
philosopher, the investigator, the moralist, the poet, the novelist,
the critic, the historian, and the compiler. It is visible in the
publication of opinions, in the structure of sentences, and in the
fidelity of citations. Men utter insincere thoughts, they express
themselves in echoes and affectations, and they are careless or
dishonest in their use of the labours of others, all the time believing
in the virtue of sincerity, all the time trying to make others believe
honesty to be the best policy.
Let us glance for a moment at the most important applications of the
principle. A man must be himself convinced if he is to convince others.
The prophet must be his own disciple, or he will make none. Enthusiasm
is contagious: belief creates belief. There is no influence issuing
from unbelief or from languid acquiescence. This is peculiarly
noticeable in Art, because Art depends on sympathy for its influence,
and unless the artist has felt the emotions he depicts we remain
unmoved: in proportion to the depth of his feeling is our sympathetic
response; in proportion to the shallowness or falsehood of his
presentation is our coldness or indifference. Many writers who have
been fond of quoting the SI VIS ME FLERE of Horace have written as if
they did not believe a word of it; for they have been silent on their
own convictions, suppressed their own experience, and falsified their
own feelings to repeat the convictions and fine phrases of another. I
am sorry that my experience assures me that many of those who will read
with complete assent all here written respecting the power of
Sincerity, will basely desert their allegiance to the truth the next
time they begin to write; and they will desert it because their
misguided views of Literature prompt them to think more of what the
public is likely to applaud than of what is worth applause;
unfortunately for them their estimation of this likelihood is generally
based on a very erroneous assumption of public wants: they grossly
mistake the taste they pander to.
In all sincere speech there is power, not necessarily great power, but
as much as the speaker is capable of. Speak for yourself and from
yourself, or be silent. It can be of no good that you should tell in
your "clever" feeble way what another has already told us with the
dynamic energy of conviction. If you can tell us something that your
own eyes have seen, your own mind has thought, your own heart has felt,
you will have power over us, and all the real power that is possible
for you. If what you have seen is trivial, if what you have thought is
erroneous, if what you have felt is feeble, it would assuredly be
better that you should not speak at all; but if you insist on speaking
Sincerity will secure the uttermost of power.
The delusions of self-love cannot be prevented, but intellectual
misconceptions as to the means of achieving success may be corrected.
Thus although it may not be possible for any introspection to discover
whether we have genius or effective power, it is quite possible to know
whether we are trading upon borrowed capital, and whether the eagle's
feathers have been picked up by us, or grow from our own wings. I hear
some one of my young readers exclaim against the disheartening tendency
of what is here said. Ambitious of success, and conscious that he has
no great resources within his own experience, he shrinks from the idea
of being thrown upon his naked faculty and limited resources, when he
feels himself capable of dexterously using the resources of others, and
so producing an effective work. "Why," he asks, "must I confine myself
to my own small experience, when I feel persuaded that it will interest
no one? Why express the opinions to which my own investigations have
led me when I suspect that they are incomplete, perhaps altogether
erroneous, and when I know that they will not be popular because they
are unlike those which have hitherto found favour? Your restrictions
would reduce two-thirds of our writers to silence!"
This reduction would, I suspect, be welcomed by every one except the
gagged writers; but as the idea of its being operative is too
chimerical for us to entertain it, and as the purpose of these pages is
to expound the principles of success and failure, not to make Quixotic
onslaughts on the windmills of stupidity and conceit, I answer my young
interrogator: "Take warning and do not write. Unless you believe in
yourself, only noodles will believe in you, and they but tepidly. If
your experience seems trivial to you, it must seem trivial to us. If
your thoughts are not fervid convictions, or sincere doubts, they will
not have the power of convictions and doubts. To believe in yourself is
the first step; to proclaim your belief the next. You cannot assume the
power of another. No jay becomes an eagle by borrowing a few eagle
feathers. It is true that your sincerity will not be a guarantee of
power. You may believe that to be important and novel which we all
recognise as trivial and old. You may be a madman, and believe yourself
a prophet. You may be a mere echo, and believe yourself a voice. These
are among the delusions against which none of us are protected. But if
Sincerity is not necessarily a guarantee of power, it is a necessary
condition of power, and no genius or prophet can exist without it."
"The highest merit we ascribe to Moses, Plato, and Milton," says
Emerson, "is that they set at nought books and traditions, and spoke
not what men thought, but what they thought. A man should learn to
detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from
within; more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet
he dismisses without notice his thought because it is his. In every
work of genius we recognise our own rejected thoughts; they come back
to us with a certain alienated majesty." It is strange that any one who
has recognised the individuality of all works of lasting influence,
should not also recognise the fact that his own individuality ought to
be steadfastly preserved. As Emerson says in continuation, "Great works
of art have no more affecting lesson for us than this. They teach us to
abide by our spontaneous impressions with good-humoured inflexibility,
then most when the whole cry of voices is on the other side. Else
tomorrow a stranger will say with masterly good sense, precisely what
we have thought and felt all the time, and we shall be forced to take
with shame our opinion from another." Accepting the opinions of another
and the tastes of another is very different from agreement in opinion
and taste. Originality is independence, not rebellion; it is sincerity,
not antagonism. Whatever you believe to be true and false, that
proclaim to be true and false; whatever you think admirable and
beautiful, that should be your model, even if all your friends and all
the critics storm at you as a crochet-monger and an eccentric. Whether
the public will feel its truth and beauty at once, or after long years,
or never cease to regard it as paradox and ugliness, no man can
foresee; enough for you to know that you have done your best, have been
true to yourself, and that the utmost power inherent in your work has
been displayed.
An orator whose purpose is to persuade men must speak the things they
wish to hear; an orator, whose purpose is to move men, must also avoid
disturbing the emotional effect by any obtrusion of intellectual
antagonism; but an author whose purpose is to instruct men, who appeals
to the intellect, must be careless of their opinions, and think only of
truth. It will often be a question when a man is or is not wise in
advancing unpalateable opinions, or in preaching heresies; but it can
never be a question that a man should be silent if unprepared to speak
the truth as he conceives it. Deference to popular opinion is one great
source of bad writing, and is all the more disastrous because the
deference is paid to some purely hypothetical requirement. When a man
fails to see the truth of certain generally accepted views, there is no
law compelling him to provoke animosity by announcing his dissent. He
may be excused if he shrink from the lurid glory of martyrdom; he may
be justified in not placing himself in a position of singularity. He
may even be commended for not helping to perplex mankind with doubts
which he feels to be founded on limited and possibly erroneous
investigation. But if allegiance to truth lays no stern command upon
him to speak out his immature dissent, it does lay a stern command not
to speak out hypocritical assent. There are many justifications of
silence; there can be none of insincerity.
Nor is this less true of minor questions; it applies equally to
opinions on matters of taste and personal feeling. Why should I echo
what seem to me the extravagant praises of Raphael's "Transfiguration,"
when, in truth, I do not greatly admire that famous work ? There is no
necessity for me to speak on the subject at all; but if I do speak,
surely it is to utter my impressions, and not to repeat what others
have uttered. Here, then, is a dilemma; if I say what I really feel
about this work, after vainly endeavouring day after day to discover
the transcendent merits discovered by thousands (or at least proclaimed
by them), there is every likelihood of my incurring the contempt of
connoisseurs, and of being reproached with want of taste in art. This
is the bugbear which scares thousands. For myself, I would rather incur
the contempt of connoisseurs than my own; the repreach of defective
taste is more endurable than the reproach of insincerity. Suppose I am
deficient in the requisite knowledge and sensibility, shall I be less
so by pretending to admire what really gives me no exquisite enjoyment?
Will the pleasure I feel in pictures be enhanced because other men
consider me right in my admlration, or diminished because they consider
me wrong?
[I have never thoroughly understood the painful anxiety of people to be
shielded against the dishonouring suspicion of not rightly appreciating
pictures, even when the very phrases they use betray their ignorance
and insensibility. Many will avow their indifference to music, and
almost boast of their ignorance of science; will sneer at abstract
theories, and profess the most tepid interest in history, who would
feel it an unpardonable insult if you doubted their enthusiasm for
painting and the "old masters" (by them secretly identified with the
brown masters). It is an insincerity fostered by general pretence. Each
man is afraid to declare his real sentiments in the presence of others
equally timid. Massive authority overawes genuine feeling].
The opinion of the majority is not lightly to be rejected; but
neither is it to be carelessly echoed. There is something noble in the
submission to a great renown, which makes all reverence a healthy
attitude if it be genuine. When I think of the immense fame of Raphael,
and of how many high and delicate minds have found exquisite delight
even in the "Transfiguration," and especially when I recall how others
of his works have affected me, it is natural to feel some diffidence in
opposing the judgment of men whose studies have given them the best
means of forming that judgment--a diffidence which may keep me silent
on the matter. To start with the assumption that you are right, and all
who oppose you are fools, cannot be a safe method. Nor in spite of a
conviction that much of the admiration expressed for the
"Transfiguration" is lip-homage and tradition, ought the non-admiring
to assume that all of it is insincere. It is quite compatible with
modesty to be perfectly independent, and with sincerity to be
respectful to the opinions and tastes of others. If you express any
opinion, you are bound to express your real opinion; let critics and
admirers utter what dithyrambs they please. Were this terror of not
being thought correct in taste once got rid of, how many stereotyped
judgments on books and pictures would be broken up! and the result of
this sincerity would be some really valuable criticism. In the presence
of Raphael's "Sistine Madonna," Titian's "Peter the Martyr," or
Masaccio's great frescoes in the Brancacci Chapel, one feels as if
there had been nothing written about these mighty works, so little does
any eulogy discriminate the elements of their profound effects, so
little have critics expressed their own thoughts and feelings. Yet
every day some wandering connoisseur stands before these pictures, and
at once, without waiting to let them sink deep into his mind, discovers
all the merits which are stereotyped in the criticisms, and discovers
nothing else. He does not wait to feel, he is impatient to range
himself with men of taste; he discards all genuine impressions,
replacing them with vague conceptions of what he is expected to see.
Inasmuch as Success must be determined by the relation between the work
and the public, the sincerity which leads a man into open revolt
against established opinions may seem to be an obstacle. Indeed,
publishers, critics, and friends are always loud in their prophecies
against originality and independence on this very ground; they do their
utmost to stifle every attempt at novelty, because they fix their eyes
upon a hypothetical public taste, and think that only what has already
been proved successful can again succeed; forgetting that whatever has
once been done need not be done over again, and forgetting that what is
now commonplace was once originality. There are cases in which a
disregard of public opinion will inevitably call forth opprobrium or
neglect; but there is no case in which Sincerity is not strength. If I
advance new views in Philosophy or Theology, I cannot expect to have
many adherents among minds altogether unprepared for such views; yet it
is certain that even those who most fiercely oppose me will recognise
the power of my voice if it is not a mere echo; and the very novelty
will challenge attention, and at last gain adherents if my views have
any real insight. At any rate the point to be considered is this, that
whether the novel views excite opposition or applause, the one
condition of their success is that they be believed in by the
propagator. The public can only be really moved by what is genuine.
Even an error if believed in will have greater force than an insincere
truth. Lip-advocacy only rouses lip-homage. It is belief which gives
momentum.
Nor is it any serious objection to what is here said, that insincerity
and timid acquiescence in the opinion and tastes of thc public do often
gain applause and temporary success. Sanding the sugar is not
immediately unprofitable. There is an unpleasant popularity given to
falsehood in this world of ours; but we love the truth notwithstanding,
and with a more enduring love. Who does not know what it is to listen
to public speakers pouring forth expressions of hollow belief and sham
enthusiasm, snatching at commonplaces with a fervour as of faith,
emphasising insincerities as if to make up by emphasis what is wanting
in feeling, all the while saying not only what they do not believe, but
what the listeners KNOW they do not believe, and what the listeners,
though they roar assent, do not themselves believe--a turbulence of
sham, the very noise of which stuns the conscience? Is such an orator
really enviable, although thunders of applause may have greeted his
efforts? Is that success, although the newspapers all over the kingdom
may be reporting the speech? What influence remains when the noise of
the shouts has died away? Whereas, if on the same occasion one man gave
utterance to a sincere thought, even if it were not a very wise
thought, although the silence of the public--perhaps its hisses--may
have produced an impression of failure, yet there is success, for the
thought will re-appear and mingle with the thoughts of men to be
adopted or combated by them, and may perhaps in a few years mark out
the speaker as a man better worth listening to than the noisy orator
whose insincerity was so much cheered.
The same observation applies to books. An author who waits upon the
times, and utters only what he thinks the world will like to hear, who
sails with the stream, admiring everything which it is "correct taste"
to admire, despising everything which has not yet received that
Hall-mark, sneering at the thoughts of a great thinker not yet accepted
as such, and slavishly repeating the small phrases of a thinker who has
gained renown, flippant and contemptuous towards opinions which he has
not taken the trouble to understand, and never venturing to oppose even
the errors of men in authority, such an author may indeed by dint of a
certain dexterity in assorting the mere husks of opinion gain the
applause of reviewers, who will call him a thinker, and of indolent men
and women who will pronounce him "so clever ;" but triumphs of this
kind are like oratorical triumphs after dinner. Every autumn the earth
is strewed with the dead leaves of such vernal successes.
I would not have the reader conclude that because I advocate
plain-speaking even of unpopular views, I mean to imply that
originality and sincerity are always in opposition to public opinion.
There are many points both of doctrine and feeling in which the world
is not likely to be wrong. But in all cases it is desirable that men
should not pretend to believe opinions which they really reject, or
express emotions they do not feel. And this rule is universal. Even
truthful and modest men will sometimes violate the rule under the
mistaken idea of being eloquent by means of the diction of eloquence.
This is a source of bad Literature. There are certain views in
Religion, Ethics, and Politics, which readily lend themselves to
eloquence, because eloquent men have written largely on them, and the
temptation to secure this facile effect often seduces men to advocate
these views in preference to views they really see to be more rational.
That this eloquence at second-hand is but feeble in its effect, does
not restrain others from repeating it. Experience never seems to teach
them that grand speech comes only from grand thoughts, passionate
speech from passionate emotions. The pomp and roll of words, the trick
of phrase, the rhytlnn and the gesture of an orator, may all be
imitated, but not his eloquence. No man was ever eloquent by trying to
be eloquent, but only by being so. Trying leads to the vice of "fine
writing"--the plague-spot of Literature, not only unhealthy in itself,
and vulgarising the grand language which should be reserved for great
thoughts, but encouraging that tendency to select only those views upon
which a spurious enthusiasm can most readily graft the representative
abstractions and stirring suggestions which will move public applause.
The "fine writer" will always prefer the opinion which is striking to
the opinion which is true. He frames his sentences by the ear, and is
only dissatisfied with them when their cadences are ill-distributed, or
their diction is too familiar. It seldom occurs to him that a sentence
should accurately express his meaning and no more; indeed there is not
often a definite meaning to be expressed, for the thought which arose
vanished while he tried to express it, and the sentence, instead of
being determined by and moulded on a thought, is determined by some
verbal suggestion. Open any book or periodical, and see how frequently
the writer does not, cannot, mean what he says; and you will observe
that in general the defect does not arise from any poverty in our
language, but from the habitual carelessness which allows expressions
to be written down unchallenged provided they are sufficiently
harmonious, and not glaringly inadequate.
The slapdash insincerity of modern style entirely sets at nought the
first principle of writing, which is accuracy. The art of writing is
not, as many seem to imagine, the art of bringing fine phrases into
rhythmical order, but the art of placing before the reader intelligible
symbols of the thoughts and feelings in the writer's mind. Endeavour to
be faithful, and if there is any beauty in your thought, your style
will be beautiful; if there is any real emotion to express, the
expression will be moving. Never rouge your style. Trust to your native
pallor rather than to cosmetics. Try to make us see what you see and to
feel what you feel, and banish from your mind whatever phrases others
may have used to express what was in their thoughts, but is not in
yours. Have you never observed what a light impression writers have
produced, in spite of a profusion of images, antitheses, witty
epigrams, and rolling periods, whereas some simpler style, altogether
wanting in such "brilliant passage," has gained the attention and
respect of thousands? Whatever is stuck on as ornament affects us as
ornament; we do not think an old hag young and handsome because the
jewels flash from her brow and bosom; if we envy her wealth, we do not
admire her beauty.
What "fine writing" is to prosaists, insincere imagery is to poets: it
is introduced for effect, not used as expression. To the real poet an
image comes spontaneously, or if it comes as an afterthought, it is
chosen because it expresses his meaning and helps to paint the picture
which is in his mind, not because it is beautiful in itself. It is a
symbol, not an ornament. Whether the image rise slowly before the mind
during contemplation, or is seen in the same flash which discloses the
picture, in each case it arises by natural association, and is SEEN,
not SOUGHT. The inferior poet is dissatisfied with what he sees, and
casts about in search after something more striking. He does not wait
till an image is borne in upon the tide of memory, he seeks for an
image that will be picturesque; and being without the delicate
selective instinct which guides the fine artist, he generally chooses
something which we feel to be not exactly in its right place. He thus--
"With gold and silver covers every part,
And hides with ornament his want of art."
Be true to your own soul, and do not try to express the thought of
another. "If some people," says Ruskin, "really see angels where others
see only empty space, let them paint angels: only let not anybody else
think they can paint an angel too, on any calculated principles of the
angelic." Unhappily this is precisely what so many will attempt,
inspired by the success of the angelic painter. Nor will the failure of
others warn them.
Whatever is sincerely felt or believed, whatever forms part of the
imaginative experience, and is not simply imitation or hearsay, may
fitly be given to the world, and will always maintain an infinite
superiority over imitative splendour; because although it by no means
follows that whatever has formed part of the artist's experience must
be impressive, or can do without artistic presentation, yet his
artistic power will always be greater over his own material than over
another's. Emerson has well remarked "that those facts, words, persons
which dwell in a man's memory without his being able to say why, remain
because they have a relation to him not less real for being as yet
unapprehended. They are symbols of value to him as they can interpret
parts of his consciousness which he would vainly seek words for in the
conventional images of books and other minds. What attracts my
attention shall have it; as I will go to the man who knocks at my door
while a thousand persons as worthy go by it to whom I give no regard.
It is enough that these particulars speak to me. A few anecdotes, a few
traits of character, manners, faces, a few incidents have an emphasis
in your memory out of all proportion to their apparent significance if
you measure them by ordinary standards. They relate to your gift. Let
them have their weight, and do not reject them, or cast about for
illustrations and facts more usual in literature."
In the notes to the last edition of his poems, Wordsworth specified the
particular occasions which furnished him with particular images. It was
the things he had SEEN which he put into his verses; and that is why
they affect us. It matters little whether the poet draws his images
directly from present experience, or indirectly from memory--whether
the sight of the slow-sailing swan, that "floats double swan and
shadow" be at once transferred to the scene of the poem he is writing,
or come back upon him in after years to complete some picture in his
mind; enough that the image be suggested, and not sought.
The sentence from Ruskin, quoted just now, will guard against the
misconception that a writer, because told to rely on his own
experience, is enjoined to forego the glory and delight of creation
even of fantastic types. He is only told never to pretend to see what
he has not seen. He is urged to follow Imagination in her most erratic
course, though like a will-o'-wisp she lead over marsh and fen away
from the haunts of mortals; but not to pretend that he is following a
will-o'-wisp when his vagrant fancy never was allured by one. It is
idle to paint fairies and goblins unless you have a genuine vision of
them which forces you to paint them. They are poetical objects, but
only to poetic minds. "Be a plain photographer if you possibly can,"
says Ruskin, "if Nature meant you for anything else she will force you
to it; but never try to be a prophet; go on quietly with your hard camp
work, and the spirit will come to you as it did to Eldad and Medad if
you are appointed to it." Yes: if you are appointed to it; if your
faculties are such that this high success is possible, it will come,
provided the faculties are employed with sincerity. Otherwise it cannot
come. No insincere effort can secure it.
If the advice I give to reject every insincerity in writing seem cruel,
because it robs the writer of so many of his effects---if it seem
disheartening to earnestly warn a man not to TRY to be eloquent, but
only to BE eloquent when his thoughts move with an impassioned
LARGO--if throwing a writer back upon his naked faculty seem especially
distasteful to those who have a painful misgiving that their faculty is
small, and that the uttermost of their own power would be far from
impressive, my answer is that I have no hope of dissuading feeble
writers from the practice of insincerity, but as under no circumstances
can they become good writers and achieve success, my analysis has no
reference to them, my advice has no aim at them. It is to the young and
strong, to the ambitious and the earnest, that my words are addressed.
It is to wipe the film from their eyes, and make them see, as they will
see directly the truth is placed before them, how easily we are all
seduced into greater or less insincerity of thought, of feeling, and of
style, either by reliance on other writers, from whom we catch the
trick of thought and turn of phrase, or from some preconceived view of
what the public will prefer. It is to the young and strong I say: Watch
vigilantly every phrase you write, and assure yourself that it
expresses what you mean; watch vigilantly every thought you express,
and assure yourself that it is yours, not another's; you may share it
with another, but you must not adopt it from him for the nonce. Of
course, if you are writing humorously or dramatically, you will not be
expected to write your own serious opinions. Humour may take its utmost
licence, yet be sincere. The dramatic genius may incarnate itself in a
hundred shapes, yet in each it will speak what it feels to be the
truth. If you are imaginatively representing the feelings of another,
as in some playful exaggeration or some dramatic personation, the truth
required of you is imaginative truth, not your personal views and
feelings. But when you write in your own person you must be rigidly
veracious, neither pretending to admire what you do not admire, or to
despise what in secret you rather like, nor surcharging your admiration
and enthusiasm to bring you into unison with the public chorus. This
vigilance may render Literature more laborious; but no one ever
supposed that success was to be had on easy terms; and if you only
write one sincere page where you might have written twenty insincere
pages, the one page is worth writing--it is Literature.
Sincerity is not only effective and honourable, it is also much less
difficult than is commonly supposed. To take a trifling example: If for
some reason I cannot, or do not, choose to verify a quotation which may
be useful to my purpose, what is to prevent my saying that the
quotation is taken at second-hand? It is true, if my quotations are for
the most part second-hand and are acknowledged as such, my erudition
will appear scanty. But it will only appear what it is. Why should I
pretend to an erudition which is not mine? Sincerity forbids it.
Prudence whispers that the pretence is, after all, vain, because those,
and those alone, who can rightly estimate erudition will infallibly
detect my pretence, whereas those whom I have deceived were not worth
deceiving. Yet in spite of Sincerity and Prudence, how shamelessly men
compile second-hand references, and display in borrowed footnotes a
pretence of labour and of accuracy! I mention this merely to show how,
even in the humbler class of compilers, the Principle of Sincerity may
find fit illustrations, and how honest work, even in references,
belongs to the same category as honest work in philosophy or poetry.
EDITOR.