BEIEF ESSAYS 239 



great masters of the ideal, from Homer down to 

 Hawthorne and Turg&ef. How they all differ 

 both in their material and treatment! but in the 

 page of each you encounter that reality, that sense 

 of substance and vitality, which are to the mind 

 what the ground is to the foot, or the air to the 

 lungs. 



VIII 



LITEEARY FAME 



Goldsmith, according to Boswell, said that he 

 had come too late into the world; that Pope and 

 other poets had carried off all the literary prizes, 

 etc. Dr. Johnson confirmed the remark, and said 

 it was difficult to get literary fame, and was every 

 day becoming more and more difficult. This is 

 probably the feeling of all writers who have reached 

 the measure of their powers; they mistake the 

 limits of their own tether for the end of the world. 

 The possibilities that are not open to them they 

 think do not exist. A man of genius and power 

 makes the world his own, and when he is done 

 with it he fancies there is nothing left. Every one 

 of us repeats the same experience on a different 

 scale. As our careers draw to a close, we fancy we 

 have exhausted the whole of life, and that there 

 will be nothing left for those who are to come after 

 us. But life is always new to the new man. 

 Think of the great names in British literature since 

 Goldsmith and Johnson; think of Burns, Words- 

 worth, Scott, Byron, Dickens, Macaulay, Carlyle, 

 Arnold, etc., each one of whom, probably, in ex- 



