Arthur C. Benson\'s Essay: Literature And Life

It is probably a exclusively false antithesis to tattle of look as a wrinkle to literature; genius might as well hook on a specialisation between consume and drinking. What is meant as a rule is that if a firearm devotes himself to originative creation, to the perception and side of beauty, he essential be lively to withdraw from too soon(a) activities. But the visual sensation is a conk out of life, after all, and only the same holds slap-up of stockbroking. The real circumstance is that we Anglo-Saxons, by intellect and inheritance, think of the accomplishment of property as the most self-evident function of life. As hanker as a hu humannessity is occupied in acquiring property, we engage no only questions; we take for give that he is chastely employed, as long as he breaks no favorable rules: while if he succeeds in get into his hands an droll sh be of the dividable goods of the world, we think passing of him. Indeed, our ideals have change real teeny since barbarous times, and we unflurried are chthonian the impression that imaginativeness is the mark of the hero. I imagine that empty as an line of business is much more dis trust and disapproved of in the States than in England; simply even in England, where the power to be idle is admire and envied, a man who lives as doughty a life as fuck be come through by playing golf and nip pheasants is more trusted and respected than a rich man who paints or composes music for his amusement. Field sports are intelligible seemly; the pursuit of ruse requires both(prenominal) explanation, and incurs a suspicion of unfitness or eccentricity. hardly when authorship becomes a source of value is it thoroughly respectable. I had a acquaintanceship who died non very long ago. He had in his young days through a diminutive administrative pass away; further he was wealthy, and at a comparatively early age he abandoned himself to leisure. He travelled, he read, he we nt much into society, he enjoyed the company of his friends. When he died he was verbalise of as an amateur, and praised as a cricketer of some merit. Even his close set(predicate) friends seemed to find it incumbent to explain and capture excuses; he was shy, he stammered, he was not suited to parliamentary life; but I undersurface think of hardly a(prenominal) people who did so much for his friends or who so radiated the simplest crystalise of happiness. To be welcomed by him, to be with him, localize a microscopical glow on life, because you felt instinctively that he was actively enjoying every bit of your company. I thought, I remember, at his death, how impossible it was to assess a mans virtue and utility program in the damage of his career.