Page:The Craftsmanship of Writing.djvu/43

THE INBORN TALENT circle or a straight line or to match colours makes up the technique of good painting. And even those few courses which the English departments of our larger universities have in recent years established for the benefit of their graduate students—courses in the structure of the short story and the play and the novel—although they are an encouraging step in the right direction, are not either in kind or in degree quite comparable to the practical training that is open to students in every other branch of art. The best instruction in any craft or profession is a practical training by someone who has already proved himself a master of it. The instructors in our medical schools, our seminaries, our schools of law, are nearly always men who have won their reputation in the sick chamber, the pulpit, the courtroom. And this is the one logical source of learning. Yet in authorship the chance [ 29 ]