Page:The Craftsmanship of Writing.djvu/119

Rh ambition that o'erleaps itself, and falls on the other"? And of course the answer is obvious enough: that the masters of literature are great enough to break the rules; that had Shakespeare constructed as Ibsen did, English literature would have been robbed of some of its noblest lines; and that when we speak of the craftsmanship of writing we are speaking of rules that must be mastered before one has earned the right to break them.

Remember, also, in choosing the authors who are to be your models, to exercise discrimination regarding the particular qualities that you will copy from each of them. Go to Dickens and Thackeray for character drawing, if you choose, but not for plot. And similarly, remember that Trollope was able to say of his characters:

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