Read it through once

The connexion between the artist's personal life and the life which he represents is always a subtle, and sometimes an obscure one. We say rightly that the artist must live; but what we mean is, that the artist must live intensely, with the whole force of his individuality; and that in such living he must make a complete and self-consistent personal experience. We demand of him that he should give us, not the mere record of events, but the transfigured record, the chosen and illuminated portion of experience, which has been seen through his mind's eye and described in the terms of his private emotion. Hence it follows that the literary artist is not to be judged by the loftiness of his aims in the abstract, but by the sincerity and completeness of the personal life which his works interpret.