The Moon and Sixpence | Page 6

that I have followed scrupulously; for every day I have got up and I have gone to bed.
But there is in my nature a strain of asceticism, and I have subjected my flesh each week
to a more severe mortification. I have never failed to read the Literary Supplement of The Times>. It is a salutary discipline to consider the vast number of books that are
written, the fair hopes with which their authors see them published, and the fate which
awaits them. What chance is there that any book will make its way among that multitude?
And the successful books are but the successes of a season. Heaven knows what pains the
author has been at, what bitter experiences he has endured and what heartache suffered,
to give some chance reader a few hours' relaxation or to while away the tedium of a
journey. And if I may judge from the reviews, many of these books are well and carefully
written; much thought has gone to their composition; to some even has been given the
anxious labour of a lifetime. The moral I draw is that the writer should seek his reward in
the pleasure of his work and in release from the burden of his thought; and, indifferent to
aught else, care nothing for praise or censure, failure or success.
Now the war has come, bringing with it a new attitude. Youth has turned to gods we of an
earlier day knew not, and it is possible to see already the direction in which those who
come after us will move. The younger generation, conscious of strength and tumultuous,
have done with knocking at the door; they have burst in and seated themselves in our
seats. The air is noisy with their shouts. Of their elders some, by imitating the antics of
youth, strive to persuade themselves that their day is not yet over; they shout with the
lustiest, but the war cry sounds hollow in their mouth; they are like poor wantons
attempting with pencil, paint and powder, with shrill gaiety, to recover the illusion of
their spring. The wiser go their way with a decent grace. In their chastened smile is an
indulgent mockery. They remember that they too trod down a sated generation, with just
such clamor and with just such scorn, and they foresee that these brave torch-bearers will
presently yield their place also. There is no last word. The new evangel was old when
Nineveh reared her greatness to the sky. These gallant words which seem so novel to
those that speak them were said in accents scarcely changed a hundred times before. The
pendulum swings backwards and forwards. The circle is ever travelled anew.
Sometimes a man survives a considerable time from an era in which he had his place into
one which is strange to him, and then the curious are offered one of the most singular
spectacles in the human comedy. Who now, for example, thinks of George Crabbe? He

was a famous poet in his day, and the world recognised his genius with a unanimity
which the greater complexity of modern life has rendered infrequent. He had learnt his
craft at the school of Alexander Pope, and he wrote moral stories in rhymed couplets.
Then came the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars, and the poets sang new
songs. Mr. Crabbe continued to write moral stories in rhymed couplets. I think he must
have read the verse of these young men who were making so great a stir in the world, and
I fancy he found it poor stuff. Of course, much of it was. But the odes of Keats and of
Wordsworth, a poem or two by Coleridge, a few more by Shelley, discovered vast realms
of the spirit that none had explored before. Mr. Crabbe was as dead as mutton, but Mr.
Crabbe continued to write moral stories in rhymed couplets. I have read desultorily the
writings of the younger generation. It may be that among them a more fervid Keats, a
more ethereal Shelley, has already published numbers the world will willingly remember.
I cannot tell. I admire their polish -- their youth is already so accomplished that it seems
absurd to speak of promise -- I marvel at the felicity of their style; but with all their
copiousness (their vocabulary suggests that they fingered Roget's in their
cradles) they say nothing to me: to my mind they know too much and feel too obviously;
I cannot stomach the heartiness with which they slap me on the back or the emotion with
which they hurl themselves on my bosom; their passion seems to me a little anaemic and
their dreams a trifle dull. I do not like them. I am on the shelf.