The canons of criticism that bear upon the one cut cruelly upon the other.
It has been suggested by a kind critic that he would better have liked the little book if it had been a history of wild adventure; of cattle driven into inaccessible kranzes by Bushmen; "of encounters with ravening lions, and hair-breadth escapes." This could not be.

Such works are best written in Piccadilly or in the Strand: there the gifts of the creative imagination, untrammelled by contact with any fact, may spread their wings.
But, should one sit down to paint the scenes among which he has grown, he will find that the facts creep in upon him.

Those brilliant phases and shapes which the imagination sees in far-off lands are not for him to portray.

Sadly he must squeeze the colour from his brush, and dip it into the gray pigments around him.

He must paint what lies before him.
R.Iron.
"We must see the first images which the external world casts upon the dark mirror of his mind; or must hear the first words which awaken the sleeping powers of thought, and stand by his earliest efforts, if we would understand the prejudices, the habits, and the passions that will rule his life.