In the morning they took no walk, but retired silently each to his own room. In the Studio the Artist opened his portfolios, and spread out the drawings made years ago when he was studying in Rome. They were good drawings; there was feeling in every line; but they were copies. There was not one scrap of original work, and his Conscience began to whisper—only he refused at first to listen—that the skill of hand and touch was gone. Then Conscience, which gets angry if disregarded, took to whispering more loudly, and presently he heard. He took crayon and paper, and began, feverishly and in haste, to copy one of his old drawings. He worked for a quarter of an hour, and then, looking at the thing he had once done beside the thing he was then doing, he dashed the pencil from him, and tore up the miserable replica in disgust. His spirit, which had flown so high, sank dull and heavy as lead; he threw himself back in his chair and began to think, gazing hopelessly into space.
It was the opportunity of Conscience, who presently began to sing as loudly as any skylark, but not so cheerfully. "You are fifty," said that voice which seldom lies, "you have wasted the last twenty years of your life; you have become a wind-bag and a shallow humbug; you cannot now paint or draw at all; what little power was in you has departed. Your brother, the Poet, has been steadily working while you have slept"—and it will be perceived that Conscience spoke from imperfect information. "He will produce a great book, and live. You will die. The grave will close over you, and you will be forgotten."
It was a hard saying, and the Artist groaned as he listened to it.
In the workshop, Cornelius also, startled into action, spread out upon the table a bundle of papers which had been lying undisturbed in his desk for a dozen years or more. They were poems he had written in his youth, unpublished verses, thoughts in rhyme such as an imaginative young man easily pours forth, reproducing the fashion of the time and the thoughts of others. He began to read these over again with mingled pleasure and pain. For the thoughts seemed strange to him. He felt that they were good and lofty thoughts, but the conviction forced itself upon him that the brain which had produced them was changed. No more of such good matter was left within it. The lines of thought were changed. The poetic faculty, a delicate plant, which droops unless it is watered and carefully tended, was dead within him.
And the whole of the Epic to be written.
Not a line done, not a single episode on paper, though to Phillis he claimed to have done so much.
He seized a pen, and with trembling fingers and agitated brain forced himself to write.
In half an hour he tore the paper into shreds, and, with a groan, threw down the pen. The result was too feeble.
Then he too began to meditate, like his brother in the Studio. Presently his guardian angel, who very seldom got such a chance, began to admonish him, even as the dean admonishes an erring undergraduate.
"You are fifty," said the invisible Censor. "What have you done with yourself for twenty years and more. Your best thoughts have passed away; the poetical eye is dim; you will write no more. Your brother, the Artist, is busy with pencil and brain. He will produce a great work, and live for ever. You will do nothing; you will go down into the pit and be forgotten."