Page:Forty years of it (IA fortyyearsofit00whitiala).pdf/370

 indulges himself in public speech it is to pour forth a tide of words,

Full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.

I used to be haunted continually by a horrid fear that I should lose the possibility of ever winning the power of utterance, since no such prudence is at all compatible with the practice of any art. For art must, first of all, be utter sincerity, the artist's business is to think out his thoughts about life to the very end, and to speak them as plainly as the power and the ability to speak them have been given to him; he must not be afraid to offend; indeed, if he succeed at all, he must certainly offend in the beginning. I am quite aware that I may seem inconsistent in this notion, since I have intimated my belief that Jones was an artist; and so he was, in a way, and, if I do not fly to the refuge of trite sayings and allege him as the exception that proves the rule, I am sure that I may say, and, if I have in the least been able to convey any distinct conception of his personality, the reader will agree with me when I say, that he was sui generis. And besides it was not as a politician that he won his success. Had he ventured outside the political jurisdiction of his own city the politicians instantly would have torn him asunder because he had not been "regular." And, that, I find, when I set it down, is precisely what I am trying to say about the artist; he must not be regular. Every great artist in the world has been irregular, as irregular as Corot, going forth in the