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246 just one touch of the imaginative given it, from passing through the colouring of his own mind." "I was very much struck," said Edward, "when Spenser was sitting to him, to mark his devotion to his art. Enthusiasm is the royal road to success. Now, call it fame, vanity—what you will—how strange and how strong is the feeling which urges on the painter or the author! We, who are neither, ought to marvel less at the works produced than at the efforts made. Their youth given to hopes, or rather fears—now brightening and now darkening, on equally slight grounds—

hours of ceaseless exertion in solitude, of feverish solicitude in society; doomed to censure, which is always in earnest, and to praise, which is not. Alas! we talk of their vanity; we forget that, in doling forth the careless commendation, or as careless sneer, we are bestowing but the passing thought of a moment to that which has been the work of an existence. Truly genius, like virtue, ought to be its own reward; but it cannot. Bitter though the toil, and vain the hope, human exertion must still look to human approbation."