but, as a rule, when a man has done this, instead of saying boldly
that the greater part of an author's writings may be wisely
neglected and left alone, he loses himself in the critical
discrimination and the chronological arrangement of inferior
compositions; perhaps he rescues a few lines of merit out of a mass
of writing; but there is hardly time now to read long ponderous
poems for the sake of a few fine flashes of emotion and expression.
What, as a rule, distinguishes the work of the amateur from the
work of the great writer is that an amateur will retain a poem for
the sake of a few good lines, whereas a great writer will
relentlessly sacrifice a few fine phrases, if the whole structure
and texture of the poem is loose and unsatisfactory. The only
chance of writing something that will live is to be sure that the
whole thing--book, essay, poem--is perfectly proportioned, firm,
hammered, definite. The sign and seal of a great writer is that he
has either the patience to improve loose work, or the courage to
sacrifice it.

But most readers are so irrational, so submissive, so deferential,
that they will swallow an author whole. They think dimly that they
can arrive at a certain kind of culture by knowledge; but knowledge
has nothing to do with it. The point is to have perception,
emotion, discrimination. This is where education fails so
grievously, that teachers of this independent and perceptive
process are so rare, and that teaching too often falls into the
hands of conscientious people, with good memories, who think that
it benefits the mind to load it with facts and dates, and forget,
or do not know, that what is needed is a sort of ardent inner fire,
that consumes the debris and fuses the ore.