Montaigne, neither could any be more unlike Cicero; yet no
craftsman can fail to see how much the one must have tried in his
time to imitate the other. Burns is the very type of a prime force
in letters: he was of all men the most imitative. Shakespeare
himself, the imperial, proceeds directly from a school. It is only
from a school that we can expect to have good writers; it is almost
invariably from a school that great writers, these lawless
exceptions, issue. Nor is there anything here that should astonish
the considerate. Before he can tell what cadences he truly
prefers, the student should have tried all that are possible;
before he can choose and preserve a fitting key of words, he should
long have practised the literary scales; and it is only after years
of such gymnastic that he can sit down at last, legions of words
swarming to his call, dozens of turns of phrase simultaneously
bidding for his choice, and he himself knowing what he wants to do
and (within the narrow limit of a man's ability) able to do it.

And it is the great point of these imitations that there still
shines beyond the student's reach his inimitable model. Let him
try as he please, he is still sure of failure; and it is a very old
and a very true saying that failure is the only highroad to
success. I must have had some disposition to learn; for I clear-
sightedly condemned my own performances. I liked doing them
indeed; but when they were done, I could see they were rubbish. In
consequence, I very rarely showed them even to my friends; and such
friends as I chose to be my confidants I must have chosen well, for
they had the friendliness to be quite plain with me, "Padding,"
said one. Another wrote: "I cannot understand why you do lyrics so
badly." No more could I! Thrice I put myself in the way of a more
authoritative rebuff, by sending a paper to a magazine. These were