The world's history
of art and letters affords too many examples of men who, because they
refused to pay court to the ruling cliques and circles of their little
day, had seen the doors of recognition slammed in their faces; and who,
even as they wrought their great works, had been forced to hear, as they
toiled, the discordant yelpings of the self-appointed watchdogs of the
halls of fame. Nor did the artist question the final outcome,--if only his
work should be found worthy to endure,--for the world's history
establishes, also, the truth--that he who labors for a higher wage than an
approving paragraph in the daily paper, may, in spite of the condemnation
of the pretending rulers, live in the life of his race, long after the
names to which he refused to bow are lost in the dust of their self-raised
thrones.
The painter was driven to his course by that self-respect, without which,
no man can sanely endure his own company; together with that reverence--I
say it deliberately--that reverence for his art, without which, no worthy
work is possible. He had come to understand that one may not prostitute
his genius to the immoral purposes of a diseased age, without reaping a
prostitute's reward.
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