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hurry that can be done slowly. It is no use to write a book and
put it by for nine or even ninety years; for in the writing you
will have partly convinced yourself; the delay must precede any
beginning; and if you meditate a work of art, you should first long
roll the subject under the tongue to make sure you like the
flavour, before you brew a volume that shall taste of it from end
to end; or if you propose to enter on the field of controversy, you
should first have thought upon the question under all conditions,
in health as well as in sickness, in sorrow as well as in joy. It
is this nearness of examination necessary for any true and kind
writing, that makes the practice of the art a prolonged and noble
education for the writer.
There is plenty to do, plenty to say, or to say over again, in the
meantime. Any literary work which conveys faithful facts or
pleasing impressions is a service to the public. It is even a
service to be thankfully proud of having rendered. The slightest
novels are a blessing to those in distress, not chloroform itself a
greater. Our fine old sea-captain's life was justified when
Carlyle soothed his mind with The King's Own or Newton Forster. To
please is to serve; and so far from its being difficult to instruct
while you amuse, it is difficult to do the one thoroughly without
the other. Some part of the writer or his life will crop out in
even a vapid book; and to read a novel that was conceived with any
force is to multiply experience and to exercise the sympathies.
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