This editor is a critic. He has pulled out his carving-knife and his
tomahawk and is starting after a book which he is going to have for
breakfast. This one’s arms are put on wrong. I did not notice it at
first, but I see it now. Somehow he has got his right arm on his left
shoulder, and his left arm on the right shoulder, and this shows us the
back of his hands in both instances. It makes him left-handed all
around, which is a thing which has never happened before, except
perhaps in a museum. That is the way with art, when it is not acquired
but born to you: you start in to make some simple little thing, not
suspecting that your genius is beginning to work and swell and strain
in secret, and all of a sudden there is a convulsion and you fetch out
something astonishing. This is called inspiration. It is an accident;
you never know when it is coming. I might have tried as much as a year
to think of such a strange thing as an all-around left-handed man and I
could not have done it, for the more you try to think of an unthinkable
thing the more it eludes you; but it can’t elude inspiration; you have
only to bait with inspiration and you will get it every time. Look at
Botticelli’s “Spring.” Those snaky women were unthinkable, but
inspiration secured them for us, thanks to goodness. It is too late to
reorganize this editor-critic now; we will leave him as he is. He will
serve to remind us.