Page:The Craftsmanship of Writing.djvu/150

Rh Shakespearean sonnets differ from those of Milton, and his again from Keats or Rossetti. He should know what constitutes a perfectly regular sonnet and what are its pardonable irregularities. Then, and not till then, he is qualified to pass judgment upon a sonnet, either his own or those of others—and, it may be, is capable of producing a sonnet good enough to be given to the world at large.

Or let us take another and far commoner case, that of the would-be writer whose interest lies mainly in fiction. It does not matter whether he prefers the short-story form or that of the novel; his training in either case will be practically the same. What he needs most is a patient study of the authors who have paid strict attention to the technique of form: in English, Henry James and Mr. Howells, Kipling and Hewlett, Gissing and George Moore are only a few whose