Depend on it, there
were plenty of decent original notions seething behind yon marble
brow. Why didn't our William use them? He was too lazy. And so am I.
It is easier to give a new twist to somebody else's story that you
take readymade than to perform that highly-specialised form of skilled
labor which consists in giving artistic coherence to a story that you
have conceived roughly for yourself. A literary gentleman once hoisted
a theory that there are only thirty-six possible stories in the world.
This--I say it with no deference at all--is bosh. There are as many
possible stories in the world as there are microbes in the well-lined
shelves of a literary gentleman's "den." On the other hand, it is
perfectly true that only a baker's dozen of these have got themselves
told. The reason lies in that bland, unalterable resolve to shirk
honest work, by which you recognise the artist as surely as you
recognise the leopard by his spots. In so far as I am an artist, I
am a loafer. And if you expect me, in that line, to do anything but
loaf, you will get the shock your romantic folly deserves. The only
difference between me and my rivals past and present is that I have
the decency to be ashamed of myself. So that if you are not too
bemused and bedevilled by my "brilliancy" to kick me downstairs, you
may rely on me to cheerfully lend a foot in the operation.
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