| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Art of Writing by Robert Louis Stevenson: handiwork; or, again, into the error of the modern landscape-
painter, who is apt to think that difficulty overcome and
science well displayed can take the place of what is, after
all, the one excuse and breath of art - charm. A little
further, and he will regard charm in the light of an unworthy
sacrifice to prettiness, and the omission of a tedious
passage as an infidelity to art.
We have now the matter of this difference before us. The
idealist, his eye singly fixed upon the greater outlines,
loves rather to fill up the interval with detail of the
conventional order, briefly touched, soberly suppressed in
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Battle of the Books by Jonathan Swift: word misplaced among gentlemen ended in a duel.
There are some men excellent at telling a story, and provided with
a plentiful stock of them, which they can draw out upon occasion in
all companies; and considering how low conversation runs now among
us, it is not altogether a contemptible talent; however, it is
subject to two unavoidable defects: frequent repetition, and being
soon exhausted; so that whoever valueth this gift in himself hath
need of a good memory, and ought frequently to shift his company,
that he may not discover the weakness of his fund; for those who
are thus endowed have seldom any other revenue, but live upon the
main stock.
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells: games. When dark came we decided to take the risk, and lit
a lamp.
After an interminable string of games, we supped, and the
artilleryman finished the champagne. We went on smoking
the cigars. He was no longer the energetic regenerator of
his species I had encountered in the morning. He was still
optimistic, but it was a less kinetic, a more thoughtful
optimism. I remember he wound up with my health, proposed
in a speech of small variety and considerable intermittence.
I took a cigar, and went upstairs to look at the lights of
which he had spoken that blazed so greenly along the
War of the Worlds |
