The danger of the
idealist is, of course, to become merely null and lose all grip of
fact, particularity, or passion.
We talk of bad and good. Everything, indeed, is good which is
conceived with honesty and executed with communicative ardour. But
though on neither side is dogmatism fitting, and though in every
case the artist must decide for himself, and decide afresh and yet
afresh for each succeeding work and new creation; yet one thing may
be generally said, that we of the last quarter of the nineteenth
century, breathing as we do the intellectual atmosphere of our age,
are more apt to err upon the side of realism than to sin in quest
of the ideal. Upon that theory it may be well to watch and correct
our own decisions, always holding back the hand from the least
appearance of irrelevant dexterity, and resolutely fixed to begin
no work that is not philosophical, passionate, dignified, happily
mirthful, or, at the last and least, romantic in design.
MY FIRST BOOK: 'TREASURE ISLAND' {17}
It was far indeed from being my first book, for I am not a novelist
alone. But I am well aware that my paymaster, the Great Public,
regards what else I have written with indifference, if not
aversion; if it call upon me at all, it calls on me in the familiar
and indelible character; and when I am asked to talk of my first
book, no question in the world but what is meant is my first novel.
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