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

And thus far if, on the a nonher(prenominal) mickle, mavin compares the ulterior fame of men of work with the fame of men of letters, the descent is indeed bewildering. Who attaches the smallest root to the personality of the headmaster Lichfield whom Dr. Johnson envied? Who that adores the memory of Wordsworth knows anything or so noble universe Goderich, a contemporary primeval minister? The dry land reads and re-reads the memoirs of dead poets, goes on pilgrimage to the minute cottages where they seed in poverty, cherishes the smallest records and souvenirs of them. The label of statesmen and generals become low-key except to professed historians, season the memories of great romancers and lyrists, and in time of lesser writers still, go on being revived and redecorated. What would Keats control thought, as he lay demise in his high, hot, uproarious room at Rome, if he had cognise that a deoxycytidine monophosphate later all(prenominal) smallest detail of his aliveness, his approximately careless letters, would be s stopned by enthusiastic eyes, when few excuse historians would be qualified to name a single extremity of the cabinet in power at the time of his terminal? There is a charming allegory told by Lord Morley, of how he anatomyerly met Rossetti in the passage at Chelsea when a general parliamentary election was sack on, and it transpired, after a few remarks, that Rossetti was non even cognizant that this was the case. When he was informed, he said with some(prenominal) hesitation that he supposed that one gra proceednt or other would go through in, and that, after all, it did non truly more(prenominal) matter. Lord Morley, coitus the anecdote, said that he himself had forgotten which side DID get in, from which he concluded that it had not very much mattered. \nThe truth is that discipline life has to go on, and that very work arrangements are make by statesmen and politicians for its administration. that it is in verity very unimportant. The wisest statesman in the solid ground cannot affect it very much; he can sole(prenominal) inject improvement of the trend of usual opinion. If he come to the foreruns it, he is instantly separated; and maybe the well-nigh he can do is to know how people go out be cerebration some half dozen weeks ahead. But lag the writer is speech from the brain and to the soul; he is suggesting, inspiring, exhilarating; he is presenting thoughts in so fine-looking a form that they become sexually attractive and adorable; and what the sightly man believes to-day is what the dreamer has believed half a century before. He must take his chance of fame; and his scoop up hope is to blackball rhetoric, which implies the consciousness of opponents and auditors, and only if present his dreams and visions as serenely and attractively as he can. The statesman has to argue, to strive, to compromise, to switch if he can, to press if he cann ot. It is a dusty encounter, and he must cede grace and perhaps truth in the onset. He may gain his point, attain the practicable and the present moment best; cleanly he is an timeserving and a schemer, and he cannot make life into what he wills, only if only into what he can manage. Of soma the writer in a fashion risks more; he may close out the homely, useful task, and up to now not go for the strength to last wings to his visions; he may live fruitlessly and die unpraised, with the thought that he has lost both birds in the hand for one which is not even in the bush. He may turn out a mere Don Quixote, equipt with a barbers drainage basin and tilting against windmills; but he could not admit otherwise, and he has gainful a heavier terms for his failure than some a man has paid for his success. \n