not believe that you could give this particular idea the adequate treatment and development for a sonnet; give it up, not on account of the idea's limitations, but because of your own." But the usual and safe rule is that every writer must find out for himself what shape he may best give his ideas—and that is why it is generally wiser, if a writer has critical friends whose advice he values, to get his start by himself, have his first draught finished, or at least well advanced, before asking for a critical opinion. It often happens that an idea which, when presented in the rough, seems to the critic quite hopeless, becomes with even a slight degree of working-up, not only promising, but triumphantly vindicated. Think how absurd it would sound to say to a goldsmith: "Don't try to make a ring out of that piece of gold wire; there isn't a ring in that wire, there is nothing but a scarf-pin!"
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