Page:Diary of a Pilgrimage (1891).pdf/301

in all things by the critics. I stayed some years in that land. But it was not a cheerful place to live in, so I dreamt.

There were authors in this country, at first, and they wrote books. But the critics could find nothing original in the books whatever, and said it was a pity that men, who might be usefully employed hoeing potatoes, should waste their time and the time of the critics, which was of still more importance, in stringing together a collection of platitudes, familiar to every school-boy, and dishing up old plots and stories that had already been cooked and recooked for the public until everybody had been surfeited with them.

And the writers read what the critics said, and sighed, and gave up writing books, and went off and hoed potatoes, as advised. They had had no experience in hoeing potatoes, and they hoed very badly; and the people whose potatoes they hoed strongly recommended them to leave hoeing potatoes, and to go back and write books. But you can't do what everybody advises.

There were artists also in this strange world, at first, and they painted pictures, which the critics came and looked at through eyeglasses.

"Nothing whatever original in them," said the critics; "same old colours, same old perspective and form, same old sunset, same old sea and land and sky and figures. Why do these poor men waste their time, painting pictures, when they might be so much more satisfactorily employed on ladders, painting houses?"

Nothing, by-the-by, you may have noticed, troubles your critic more than the idea that the artist is wasting his time. It is the waste of time that vexes the critic: he has such an exalted idea of the value of other people's