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
very fact a Bed-Book of Happiness is another and a much harder matter.
For, to begin with, one's judgment is not nearly so free and one's field
of selection not nearly so wide as the anthologist's whose book is for
all sorts and conditions of men, who may be as merry as he wishes on one
page, as solemn as he chooses on the next, and as pathetic or
sentimental as he likes on the page beyond. One has had to reject, for
instance, humour that is too boisterous or noisy, wit that is too
stinging and acrimonious, anecdotes that are touched with cruelty,
essays that, otherwise cheerful, deviate into the shadows of a too
sombre reflection.
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