It is the green fruit that clings tenaciously to the bough; the
ripe falls of itself.
But as blighted and worm-eaten apples likewise fall of themselves, so in
this ease of execution the falsest work may agree with the best. That
the similarity is purely specious needs not be urged; yet in practically
distinguishing between the two there are not a few that fail. The most
precious work is performed with a noble, though not idle ease, because
it is the sincere, seasonable, and, as it were, inevitable flowering
into expression of one's inward life; and work utterly, glibly insincere
and imitative is often done with ease, because it is so successfully
separated from the inward life as not even to recognize its claim.
Accordingly, pure art and pure artifice, sincere creation and sheer
fabrication, flow; from the mixture of these, or from any mixture of
natural and necessary with factitious expression, comes embarrassment.
In the mastery of life, or of death, there is peace; the intermediate
state, that of sickness, is full of pain and struggle. In Homer and
in Tupper, in Cicero and the leaders of the London "Times," in Jeremy
Taylor and the latest Reverend Mr. Orotund, you find a liberal and
privileged utterance; but honest John Foster, made of powerful, but
ill-composed elements, and replete with an intelligence now gleaming and
now murky, could wring statements from his mind only as testimony in
cruel ages was obtained from unwilling witnesses, namely, by putting
himself to the torture.
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