Habit and
practice sharpen gifts; the necessity of toil grows less
disgusting, grows even welcome, in the course of years; a small
taste (if it be only genuine) waxes with indulgence into an
exclusive passion. Enough, just now, if you can look back over a
fair interval, and see that your chosen art has a little more than
held its own among the thronging interests of youth. Time will do
the rest, if devotion help it; and soon your every thought will be
engrossed in that beloved occupation.
But even with devotion, you may remind me, even with unfaltering
and delighted industry, many thousand artists spend their lives, if
the result be regarded, utterly in vain: a thousand artists, and
never one work of art. But the vast mass of mankind are incapable
of doing anything reasonably well, art among the rest. The
worthless artist would not improbably have been a quite incompetent
baker. And the artist, even if he does not amuse the public,
amuses himself; so that there will always be one man the happier
for his vigils. This is the practical side of art: its
inexpugnable fortress for the true practitioner. The direct
returns - the wages of the trade are small, but the indirect - the
wages of the life - are incalculably great.
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