SUCCESS! – I just now find in a common, poor sort of dictionary, the dictionary everyone uses without fear of too much information, that Success may be defined as “prosperity,” or ” a fortunate result” – prosperity and good fortune – a fortune probably the full meaning. I had not searched the dictionary intent on knowledge, but opened it by chance while thinking of the following lines by some unknown writer:-

” Success:

Prometheus writhing on his rock of pain,

With his eternal chain,

And with Jove’s Vulture gnawing at his heart.

” Success:

In cultured Athens, in yon cell where lies

Old Socrates the Wise;-

Drink up the hemlock dregs, and so depart!”

It would seem, then, that there are two kinds of success; since the Promethean practice and the theory of Socrates do not agree with the every-day dictionary definition. Yet I may have been hasty and my construction insufficient when I narrowed “prosperity and good fortune” to so poor a meaning as only so many dollars a year, the fortune of a Rothschild or a Gould. A “fortunate result” – that must depend something on the aim. What was the aim of the Fire-Bringer? He had the fortune to obtain the result he sought. For all his rock of expiation, his purpose had prospered, and fire remained his gift to man. Nor were the hemlock dregs so distasteful to the Wise Athenian. Would he have given up his wisdom for some more palatable savor? Pleasant even the poison-taste of hemlock in comparison with a draught of the “good fortune” of folly!

Words, like swords, are two-edged; like sticks, they can have two ends. The aged miser, who is nothing but a lifeless lump of bullion, may be called successful, truly fortunate in the result that satisfies him. That may be considered as the dirty end of the stick; it has dibbled in the mire. The Promethean and Socratic end points ” the other way.”

This word Success is interesting to us all. From earliest youth to the grave’s edge we cannot be indifferent to it. To lack success is to have an imperfect, an incomplete, a partially ruined life. How many fail! How few of those who fail can say calmly and honestly, as the gray shadows of age begin to fold them in: “My failure does not too much grieve me. I have done my best; I am not blameworthy.

“’Tis not in mortals to command success; I have at least deserved it. Fate only grudges me my wages – Fate, stronger than most earnest and ever-faithful Endeavor.”

Surely to the artist the completeness and perfection of life ought to be more important than to ordinary men. For what sort of an artist is he who leaves Art out of his life? The moral and further bearing of which observation I may leave to the preacher, confining myself here to the question which first set me on this track of thought, the question of What is Success? Let me say in Art, for sculptor, painter, poet, musician, or other servitor in Art’s great temple.

I will take the painter. His necessity of choice – standing as Hercules between Pleasure and Virtue – may not be quite so distinctly marked. By pleasure let us mean an easy life, with a delightful occupation, leading to good repute and wealth. By virtue we intend that purpose above pleasing, that close adherence to and devout study of his art, which will be surely slow in recognition, perhaps not recognized by his contemporaries; which may keep him poor through life, and give him when most fortunate only the promise of a posthumous fame. Young Hopeful thinks he can go both ways. He studies, he knows something, it may be, of the laborious days and wakeful nights of the enthusiast. But greedy for a swift applause (and the desire of appreciation is natural and good) he forgets the diviner impulse; plumes himself on partial praise; is content with popularity, finds it pay, begins forthwith, however imperceptibly to himself, to paint for patron and purchaser, stoops to the level of a slave, repeats the ordered task, with increasing facility, perhaps, and even more admirable technique; so slides along the slippery floor of fortune, having given up the care to climb, and settles down for life in that hollow place, the enchanted garden of rich and happy mediocrity, the quagmire in which is built the palace of – “Success.” So the world, so his fellow artists even, so he himself may call it. The gods for all time know it by the name of Failure.

May not the painter be rich? Wherefore not? His calling is honorable, and should be of service to the world. A stock-jobber is not more worthy of a quite sufficient income. But the stock-jobber’s ” fortunate result” and fitting reward is in the stocks, an appreciable value. Is there no other fortunate result to be desired and sought for by the artist?

I cannot measure an artist’s success by the same rule as that of a shopman or a speculator. I cannot always call the “fortunate ” artist successful. He has a stone-fronted mansion, gives excellent dinners, spends his money like a prince, has fair enjoyment of his surroundings, is a great man – yet does not appear to me to stand Saul-like above the herd. As he is an artist, I dare not call him successful.

Two men of the other class come before my thoughts – two men of the higher class of artists; their names are known, their works not known well. The one, I am sure, was never spoken of as a “successful artist.” The other could tell of years “hopeless and yet hopeful,” “much disappointment,” “again in regard to my works defeat, no reward, great loss.” Yet, to my mind, these two men were pre-eminently successful. Though they acquired neither riches nor the pleasant applause of the multitude (even the critic, the appointed vindicator of unappreciated merit, passing by on the other side, unnoticing) – though both died comparatively young, their lives broken, their memory as once-living men left to the few, the very few who stood near them in affection and admiration – yet were they successful, in the highest meaning of the word. For they had achieved a fortunate result; their purpose (within natural limitations, for there is in all art the unattainable) had prospered; they did work which will live.

The men I speak of are Alfred Stevens, the sculptor of the Wellington Monument in St. Paul’s, than whom England has had no more thoroughly accomplished artist, and David Scott, the great Scottish painter. Unsuccessful shall we call these men? Their work lives and will live. How much will live, how much is worth living of the work of some “successful” contemporaries?

The Art Union