Literature flourishes best when it is half a trade and half an art.

Inge’s remark balances two forces that often pull writers in opposite directions: the disciplined, market-facing side of writing (“trade”) and the imaginative, truth-seeking side (“art”). Read this way, he suggests literature thrives when authors are neither purely commercial hacks nor purely rarefied aesthetes. The “trade” half implies craft, revision, professional standards, and an awareness of readers; the “art” half implies originality, moral or spiritual seriousness, and the freedom to exceed formulas. The aphorism also hints that a healthy literary culture needs institutions—publishers, periodicals, patronage, education—that reward skill without reducing writing to mere commodity.