AN EGOTISTICAL CHAPTER 13 



rare are real poems, — poems that spring from real 

 feeling, a real throb of emotion, and not from a 

 mere surface-itching of the mind for literary expres- 

 sion! The world is full of "rhyming parasites," 

 as Milton called them. The great mass of the poetry 

 of any age is purely artificial, and has no root in 

 real things. It is a kind of masquerading. The 

 stock poetic forms are masks behind which the 

 poetlings hide their real poverty of thought and 

 feeling. In prose one has no such factitious aids; 

 here he must stand upon his own merits; he has 

 not the cloak of Milton or Tennyson, or Spenser, 

 to hide in. 



It is, of course, the young writer who oftenest 

 fails to speak his real mind, or to speak from any 

 proper basis of insight and conviction. He is car- 

 ried away by a fancy, a love of novelty, or an affec- 

 tation of originality. The strange things, the novel 

 things, are seldom true. Look for truth under your 

 feet. To be original, Carlyle said, is to be sincere. 

 When one is young, how many discoveries he 

 makes, — real mare's-eggs, which by and by turn 

 out to be nothing but field-pumpkins ! 



Men who, like myself, are deficient in self-asser- 

 tion, or whose personalities are flexible and yield- 

 ing, make a poor show in politics or business, but 

 in certain other fields these defects have their 

 advantages. In action, Renan says, one is weak 

 by his best qualities, — such, I suppose, as tender- 



