The Bed-Book of Happiness by Harold Begbie
page 7 of 431 (01%)
page 7 of 431 (01%)
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nothing to exacerbate irritable nerves, nothing to confirm the mind in
dejection. And on its positive side I said that this book should be diverse and changeful in its happiness. I planned that while cheerfulness should be its soul, the expression of that cheerfulness should avoid monotony with as great an energy as the book itself avoided depression. My theory was a book whose pages should resemble rather an _olla podrida_ of variety than a tautological joint of monotonous nutriment. And I sought to fill my wallet rather from the crumbs let fall by the happy feasters than from the too familiar table of the great masters. "To muse, to dream, to conceive of fine works, is a delightful occupation." But one must go from conception to execution, crossing the gulf that separates "these two hemispheres of Art." "The man," says Balzac, "who can but sketch his purpose beforehand in words is regarded as a wonder, and every artist and writer possesses that faculty. But gestation, fruition, the laborious rearing of the offspring, putting it to bed every night full fed with milk, embracing it anew every morning with the inexhaustible affection of a mother's heart, licking it clean, dressing it a hundred times in the richest garb only to be instantly destroyed; then never to be cast down at the convulsions of this headlong life till the living masterpiece is perfected which in sculpture speaks to every eye, in literature to every intellect, in painting to every memory, in music to every heart!--this is the task of execution." Even the compiler knows something of this passion of the artist, experiences some at least of the convulsions of this headlong life, makes acquaintance certainly with this task of execution. To conceive such a volume as a Bed-Book of Happiness is one matter, to make it in |
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