But when you attempt to reconstruct it in words, you will find that it breaks into a thousand conflicting impressions. Some must be subdued; others emphasized; in the process you will lose, probably all grasp upon the emotion itself.

然而，你动手用文字来重新构造时，你发现这一切变成了千百个互相冲突的印象。有的要淡化，有的要突出；在写的过程里，你可能会失去你想捕捉的情感。

Then turn from your blurred and littered pages to the opening pages of some great novelist — Defoe, Jane Austen, Hardy. Now you will be better able to appreciate their mastery. It is not merely that we are in the presence of a different person — Defoe, Jane Austen, or Thomas Hardy — but that we are living in a different world.

这时候，放下你写得稀里糊涂颠三倒四的东西，打开某些大小说家的小说读一读——笛福、简·奥斯汀、哈代。现在，你能欣赏他们的匠心功力了。我们不仅面临一个与众不同的人——笛福、简·奥斯丁或托马斯·哈代——我们还生活在一个与众不同的世界里。

Here, in Robinson Crusoe, we are trudging a plain high road; one thing happens after another; the fact and the order of the fact is enough. But if the open air and adventure mean everything to Defoe they mean nothing to Jane Austen. Hers is the drawing-room, and people talking, and by the many mirrors of their talk revealing their characters. And if, when we have accustomed ourselves to the drawing-room and its reflections, we turn to hardy, we are once more spun around.

在《鲁滨逊飘流记》里我们是在一条普普通通的公路上跋涉前进；只要事实和事实的先后次序便足够了。然而，如果说笛福看重的是野外生活和冒险行动，它们对简·奥斯丁来说却毫无意义。客厅才是她的天地，还有人们的谈天说地，她通过各种各样的表现谈话的镜子来揭示他们的性格。当我们习惯于这个客厅及其中闪烁多姿的映像以后又转而去阅读哈代，那我们又会晕头转向。

The moors are round us and the stars above our heads. The other side of the mind is now exposed — the dark side that comes uppermost in solitude, not the light side that shows in company. Our relations are not towards people, but towards Nature and destiny.

我们周围是沼泽，头顶上是星星。人性的另外一面被揭示了一孤独时得到突出表现的黑暗的一面，而不是与友朋相处时闪闪发亮的光明的一面。我们不是跟人而是跟大自然、跟命运发生关系。

Yet different as these worlds are, each is consistent with itself. The maker of each is careful to observe the laws of his own perspective, and however great a strain they may put upon us they will never confuse us, as lesser writers so frequently do, by introducing two different kinds of reality into the same book.

然而，这些世界虽然互不相同，它们各自却都统一谐调。每个世界的创造者都小心翼翼地遵守各自透视事物的法规，而且，不管他们给我们以多大负担，他们从来不会使我们感到迷惑，不像有些二流作家常常在同一本书里介绍两种完全不相同的现实，把读者弄得无所适从。

Thus to go from one great novelist to another — from Jane Austen to Hardy, from Peakcok to Trollope, from Scott to Meredith — is to be wrenched and uprooted; to be thrown this way and then that. To read a novel is a difficult and complex art. You must be capable not only of great finesse of perception, but of great boldness of imagination if you are going to make use of all that the novelist — the great artist — gives you.

因此，从一位伟大的小说家到另一位——从简·奥斯丁到哈代，从皮科克到特罗洛普，从司各特到梅瑞狄斯——我们都要经受一场脱胎换骨、背井离乡的痛苦，被扔过来又赶过去。读小说是一门艰难复杂的艺术。你不仅要有高明的洞察秋毫的本事，你还要能够敢于进行大胆的想象，如果你想充分利用伟大的小说家——伟大的艺术家——所给予你的一切。