time laboured with sustained and tireless, yet tranquil energy; we can only produce imitations of the greater models with a vast amount of spasmodic hurry and clamour. So, perchance, we shall leave to future generations little more than an echo of "much ado about nothing." For, truly, we live at present under a veritable scourge of mere noise. No king, no statesman, no general, no thinker, no writer, is allowed to follow the course of his duty or work without the shrieking comments of all sorts and conditions of uninstructed and misguided persons, and under such circumstances it is well to remember the strong lines of our last great poet Laureate:—
Step by step we gain'd a freedom, known to Europe, known to all,—
Step by step we rose to greatness,—through the tonguesters we may fall!
But our chief disablement for high creative work,—and one that is particularly noticeable at this immediate period of our history, is, as I have said, the "vanishing of the gift"—the lack of Imagination. To be wanting in this, is to be wanting in the first element of artistic greatness. The poet, the painter, the sculptor, or the musician must be able to make a world of his own and live in it, before he can make one for others. When he has evolved such a world out of his individual consciousness, and has peopled it with the creations of his fancy, he can turn its "airy substance" into reality for all time. For the things we call "imaginative" are often far more real than what we call "realism." All that we touch, taste and see, we call "real."
