Yet neither the amateur nor the
professional can hope to capture the spirit of art by joy or
faithfulness. It is a kind of divine felicity, when all is said and
done, the kindly gift of God.
Now into this free wild world of art and literature and music comes
the specialist and pegs out his claim, fencing out the amateur, who
is essentially a rambler, from a hundred eligible situations. In
literature this is particularly the case: the amateur is told by
the historian that he must not intrude upon history; that history
is a science, and not a province of literature; that the time has
not come to draw any conclusions or to summarise any tendencies;
that picturesque narrative is an offence against the spirit of
Truth; that no one is as black or as white as he is painted; and
that to trifle with history is to commit a sin compounded of the
sin of Ananias and Simon Magus. The amateur runs off, his hands
over his ears, and henceforth hardly dares even to read history, to
say nothing of writing it. Perhaps I draw too harsh a picture, but
the truth is that I did, as a very young man, with no training
except that provided by a sketchy knowledge of the classics, once
attempt to write an historical biography.
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