THOU SHALT NOT PKEACH 139 



periences, Tennyson that of other men as well. 

 One reaped only where he had sown, the other 

 where all men had sown. One is colored hy West- 

 moreland, the other by the whole of England. 

 Wordsworth wrote more from character and natural 

 bias than Tennyson. What nature does with a man, 

 — that is no credit to him ; but what he does with 

 nature. If his character inspired the poem, is it 

 not less than if his imagination had inspired it ? 

 What a man does out of and independent of him- 

 self, or the degree in which he transcends his own 

 experience and partialities and rises into universal 

 relations, — is not that the measure of him as an 

 artist ? If I tell only what I know, what I have 

 felt, what I have seen, no matter how well I do it, 

 that is not to come into the sphere the artist dwells 

 in. What Wordsworth writes is more personal to 

 himself, more out of his own life, than what Ten- 

 nyson writes. He is more limited by his tempera^ 

 ment and natural bias than Tennyson is by his. 

 His word is more inevitable, more the word of fate, 

 but is it not therefore less the word of art ? Be 

 sincere, be sincere ; be not too sincere, lest you sub- 

 stitute a moral rigidity for the flexibility demanded 

 by art. The artist is never the slave of his sin- 

 cerity. 



Graphic power is only a minor part of artistic 

 power. One can say what one has felt, and tell 

 what one has experienced ; but the artist can tell 

 what he has not experienced, and say what he has 

 not felt. He can make the assumed, the imaginary, 



