THE INBORN TALENT
The shadow of generations of perfunctory writers seems to rest upon the paper, and only here and there is it broken by a ray of light from the present.… I know of no language—ancient or modern, civilized or savage—so insufficient for the purposes of language, so dreary and inexpressive, as theme-language in the mass.
The practical question, then, is: In the absence of special training-schools what advice should be given to a beginner?
Are there any lines of special study that he may follow, any form of self-training that he may put himself through? The answer is: Yes, there is the theoretical help of text-books on technique, and there is the practical training of journalism. But it is well to remember, on the one hand, that all the text-books ever written on the English novel will not make a novelist, any more than Ruskin's Modern Painters, even though committed to memory, would make a Millais or a Bouguereau.
