Probably the truth is, that art precedes criticism, and that every great writer creates or revives the taste by which he is appreciated. True, we are wont to claim that "one touch of nature makes the whole world kin"; but it sometimes takes the world a good while to acknowledge its poor relations. It seems hard for most persons to recognize a touch of nature when they see it. The trees have formed their buds in autumn every year since trees first waved; but you will find that the great majority of persons have never made that discovery, and suppose that Nature gets up those ornaments in spring. And if we are thus blind to what hangs conspicuously before our eyes for the whole long winter of every year, how unobservant must we be of the rarer phases of earthly beauty and of human life? Keep to the conventional, and you have something which all have seen, even if they disapprove; copy Nature, and her colors make art appear incredible. If you could paint the sunset before your window as gorgeous as it is, your picture would be hooted from the walls of the exhibition. If you were to write into fiction the true story of the man or woman you met yesterday, it would be scouted as too wildly unreal. Indeed, the literary artist may almost say, as did the Duke of Wellington when urged to write his memoirs, "I should like to speak the truth; but if I did, I should be torn in pieces." Therefore the writer, when he adopts a high aim, must be a law to himself, bide his time, and take the risk of discovering, at last, that his life has been a failure. His task is one in which failure is easy, when he must not only depict the truths of Nature, but must do this with such verisimilitude as to vindicate its truth to other eyes, And since this recognition may not even begin till after his death, we can see what Rivarol meant by his fine saying, that "genius is only great patience," and Buffon, by his more guarded definition of genius as the aptitude for patience.