Page:Sarah Sheppard - L. E. L.pdf/9

 only to the wrong spirit and unworthy motives of depreciation, which operate like the indolence and fear of the Hebrew spies inducing an evil report of Canaan, while all the time the land was an exceeding fruitful land, flowing with milk and honey.

Although these remarks may seem severe, their truth will be attested by all who have marked through good and ill report the career of some distinguished literary characters. The higher the elevation to which talent raises its possessor, the more distinguished is the mark for the arrows of ill-nature. The brighter the sunshine of genius and fame, the deeper will be the shadows cast by suspicion, envy, depreciation, malice, and all uncharitableness.

Thus is a literary life too often made one of bitter endurance or intense suffering: the cold—the careless world seeks for no object beyond its own amusement, and will not hesitate to turn against an author weapons decked even with the fine gold and precious gems gathered from his own intellectual treasury. Emotions, too, the deepest and sweetest ever breathed from the heart's lyre, are frequently called forth only to be again suppressed by the world's reckless hand. They are valued as the "sons étouffées" of the harp, merely for the additional effect they may impart to some brilliant composition.*