Table-Talk | Page 4

yourself into the hands of a greater power, that of Nature, with
the simplicity of a child, and the devotion of an enthusiast--'study with
joy her manner, and with rapture taste her style.' The mind is calm, and
full at the same time. The hand and eye are equally employed. In
tracing the commonest object, a plant or the stump of a tree, you learn
something every moment. You perceive unexpected differences, and
discover likenesses where you looked for no such thing. You try to set
down what you see--find out your error, and correct it. You need not
play tricks, or purposely mistake: with all your pains, you are still far
short of the mark. Patience grows out of the endless pursuit, and turns it
into a luxury. A streak in a flower, a wrinkle in a leaf, a tinge in a cloud,
a stain in an old wall or ruin grey, are seized with avidity as the spolia
opima of this sort of mental warfare, and furnish out labour for another
half-day. The hours pass away untold, without chagrin, and without
weariness; nor would you ever wish to pass them otherwise. Innocence
is joined with industry, pleasure with business; and the mind is satisfied,
though it is not engaged in thinking or in doing any mischief.[1]
I have not much pleasure in writing these Essays, or in reading them
afterwards; though I own I now and then meet with a phrase that I like,
or a thought that strikes me as a true one. But after I begin them, I am
only anxious to get to the end of them, which I am not sure I shall do,
for I seldom see my way a page or even a sentence beforehand; and
when I have as by a miracle escaped, I trouble myself little more about
them. I sometimes have to write them twice over: then it is necessary to
read the proof, to prevent mistakes by the printer; so that by the time

they appear in a tangible shape, and one can con them over with a
conscious, sidelong glance to the public approbation, they have lost
their gloss and relish, and become 'more tedious than a twice-told tale.'
For a person to read his own works over with any great delight, he
ought first to forget that he ever wrote them. Familiarity naturally
breeds contempt. It is, in fact, like poring fondly over a piece of blank
paper; from repetition, the words convey no distinct meaning to the
mind--are mere idle sounds, except that our vanity claims an interest
and property in them. I have more satisfaction in my own thoughts than
in dictating them to others: words are necessary to explain the
impression of certain things upon me to the reader, but they rather
weaken and draw a veil over than strengthen it to myself. However I
might say with the poet, 'My mind to me a kingdom is,' yet I have little
ambition 'to set a throne or chair of state in the understandings of other
men.' The ideas we cherish most exist best in a kind of shadowy
abstraction,
Pure in the last recesses of the mind,
and derive neither force nor interest from being exposed to public view.
They are old familiar acquaintance, and any change in them, arising
from the adventitious ornaments of style or dress, is little to their
advantage. After I have once written on a subject, it goes out of my
mind: my feelings about it have been melted down into words, and then
I forget. I have, as it were, discharged my memory of its old habitual
reckoning, and rubbed out the score of real sentiment. For the future it
exists only for the sake of others. But I cannot say, from my own
experience, that the same process takes place in transferring our ideas
to canvas; they gain more than they lose in the mechanical
transformation. One is never tired of painting, because you have to set
down not what you knew already, but what you have just discovered. In
the former case you translate feelings into words; in the latter, names
into things. There is a continual creation out of nothing going on. With
every stroke of the brush a new field of inquiry is laid open; new
difficulties arise, and new triumphs are prepared over them. By
comparing the imitation with the original, you see what you have done,
and how much you have still to do. The test of the senses is severer

than that of fancy, and an over-match even for the delusions of our
self-love. One part of a picture shames another, and you determine to
paint up to yourself, if you cannot come up to Nature. Every object
becomes lustrous from the