The test is absolute, inevitable—Is your art first with you? Then you are artists: you may be, after you have made your money, misers and usurers; you may be, after you have got your fame, jealous, and proud, and wretched, and base:—-but yet, as long as you won’t spoil your work, you are artists. On the other hand —Is your money first with you, and your fame first with you? Then you may be very charitable with your money, and very magnificent with your money, and very graceful in the way you wear your reputation, and very courteous to those beneath you, and very acceptable to those above you; but you are not artists. You are mechanics, and drudges.
