apparently entirely uninteresting; but if one has the eye of a
novelist for the facts of life, the power to divine character, the
gift to catch the turn of speech, the trick of voice, the peculiarity
of manner, what resources, discoveries, and diversion are at hand! The
artist never has to search for material; it is always at hand. That it
is old, trite, stale to others, is of no consequence; it is always
fresh and significant to him.

This freshness of feeling is not in any way dependent on the character
of the materials upon which it plays; it is not an irresponsible
temperamental quality which seeks the joyful or comic facts of life
and ignores its sad and tragic aspects. The zest of spirit which one
finds in Shakespeare, for instance, is not a blind optimism
thoughtlessly escaping from the shadows into the sunshine. On the
contrary, it is drawn by a deep instinct to study the most perplexing
problems of character, and to drop its plummets into the blackest
abysses of experience. Literature deals habitually with the most
sombre side of the human lot, and finds its richest material in those
awful happenings which invest the history of every race with such
pathetic interest; and yet literature, in its great moments, overflows
with vitality, zest of spirit, freshness of spirit! There is no
contradiction in all this; for the vitality which pervades great art
is not dependent upon external conditions; it has its source in the
soul of the artist. It is the immortal quality in the human spirit
playing like sunshine on the hardest and most tragic facts of
experience. It often suggests no explanation of these facts; it is
content to present them with relentless veracity; but even when it
offers no solution of the tragic problem, the tireless interest which
it feels, the force with which it illustrates and describes, the power
of moral organisation and interpretation which it reveals, carry with