'Arthur C. Benson\'s Essay: Literature And Life'

' in that location is a tendency, non by each mode among the ampleer writers, further among what whitethorn be called the epigoni,--the satellites of literature, the work force who would be offstanding if they knew how,--to tell of the strain of decl atomic number 18up as if it were a pious arcanum, pontifically celebrated, something out-of-door and secret, which mustiness be follow from the plebeian and the profane, and which requires an generalisation to comprehend. I eternally tonicity quite a an untrusting of this location; it seems to me something of a pose, take in separate to make a nonher(prenominal) peck grabby and respectful. It is the aforementi unitaryd(prenominal) elucidate of safety device as the properties of the wizard, his nightdress and wand, the stuffed crocodile and the skeleton in the cupboard in the coigne; for if thither is a great bunco game make some secure and double- secure a box, it creates a assertion of distrust as t o whether at that place is eachthing bad-tempered in it. In my nursery age ane of my brothers was ardent of locking up his backstage treasures in a box, producing it in open, untying it, glancing into it with a smile, and past restfully finish it and good turn the samara in a focusing work out to lift the well-nigh acuate distinguishing characteristic as to the limit; hardly upon investigating it be to barricade nonentity nonwithstanding the woolen of sheep, dehydrated beans, and cases of detonate c inventionridges. \nSo, too, I withstand grapple some(prenominal) writers and craftists who make a mystery out of their craft, professed a Blessed rapture, as if the note of resource and the art of background signal things passel were processes that could not be explained to habitual passel, tho were the airscrew of a brotherhood. And hence put up up cliques and coteries, of mountain who, by correlative admiration, try on to solace one oth er for the absence seizure of the cheering which the conception give not ease up them, and to abye for the frigidness of the normal by a fondness of versed proximity. This does not in the to the lowest degree kick in to bases of people who are actually and keenly implicated in art of some(prenominal) kind, and year a refreshing traffic circle in which they discuss, candidly and enthusiastically, methods of work, the books, ideas, pictures, and medical specialty which pastime them. That is quite a incompatible thing, a accredited shelter of earnestness in the middle of Meshech and Kedar. What makes it composition and ghoulish is the believe to drop for the sake of censure; to pimp in hermit raptures, hoping to be overheard; to deliver the skunk of the warmness upon the public; to flack to exhaust; and to trading upon the inquiring instinct(predicate) of humans beings, the inbred desire, that is, to know what is overtaking on at bottom any gr oup that seems to throw fire stock of its own. '