A very narrow channel to carry off the strong tide of a man’s thought.

Of Meredith, Levy once remarked: ‘He expresses in a Gothic style the fact that he has nothing to say.’

It is this ‘having something to say’ that drives men to authorship, for no other medium can serve. That is why some doctors turn from their medicine, some engineers from their workshop and some painters from their easel, in order to engage in literary authorship.

Explaining why he found the study of art wearisome, George Moore remarks very significantly: ‘I was beginning to regard the delineation of a nymph or youth bathing as a very narrow channel to carry off the strong tide of a man’s thought.’ This exactly expresses what I felt about pursuing the calling for which, owing to my heritage from my paternal grandfather and my father, I was undoubtedly gifted. For, powerful though my mother’s influence may have been in weaning me from the graphic arts, it would have proved less effective had I not felt cramped by the narrow ‘channel’ that art offered for carrying off the ‘full tide’ of my thought.

Ludovici