people and abide indefinitely in the midst of them,
yet their more righteous contempt never for one instant
permits them to be their real selves in his presence.
In consequence, his most conscientious report
of them, their ways, lives, and interests, is absolutely
of no importance or value in the world. He
never knew them, nor will he ever know them. They
are not his kind of people, any more than he is their
kind of man; and THEIR disappointment grieves us
more than his.

The master in Literature, as in any art, is that
"divinely gifted man" who does just obeisance to
all living creatures, "both man and beast and bird."
It is this master only who, as he writes, can sweep
himself aside and leave his humble characters to do
the thinking and the talking. This man it is who
celebrates his performance--not himself. His work
he celebrates because it is not his only, but because
he feels it to be the conscientious reproduction of
life itself--as he has seen and known and felt it;--a
representation it is of God's own script, translated
and transcribed by the worshipful mind and heart
and hand of genius. This virtue is impartially
demanded in all art, and genius only can fully
answer the demand in any art for which we claim
perfection. The painter has his expression of it,
with no slighting of the dialect element; so, too, the
sculptor, the musician, and the list entire. In the
line of Literature and literary material, an illustration