There is a tendency, not by any means among the greater writers,
but among what may be called the epigoni,--the satellites of
literature, the men who would be great if they knew how,--to speak
of the business of writing as if it were a sacred mystery,
pontifically celebrated, something remote and secret, which must be
guarded from the vulgar and the profane, and which requires an
initiation to comprehend. I always feel rather suspicious of this
attitude; it seems to me something of a pose, adopted in order to
make other people envious and respectful. It is the same sort of
precaution as the "properties" of the wizard, his gown and wand,
the stuffed crocodile and the skeleton in the corner; for if there
is a great fuss made about locking and double-locking a box, it
creates a presumption of doubt as to whether there is anything
particular in it. In my nursery days one of my brothers was fond of
locking up his private treasures in a box, producing it in public,
unfastening it, glancing into it with a smile, and then softly
closing it and turning the key in a way calculated to provoke the
most intense curiosity as to the contents; but upon investigation
it proved to contain nothing but the wool of sheep, dried beans,
and cases of exploded cartridges.

So, too, I have known both writers and artists who made a mystery
out of their craft, professed a holy rapture, as if the business of
imagination and the art of setting things down were processes that
could not be explained to ordinary people, but were the property of