of this to be that men of letters are not often invited to be
knights and baronets. I do not think that they wish it;--and if
they had it they would, as a body, lose much more than they would
gain. I do not at all desire to have letters put after my name, or
to be called Sir Anthony, but if my friends Tom Hughes and Charles
Reade became Sir Thomas and Sir Charles, I do not know how I might
feel,--or how my wife might feel, if we were left unbedecked. As
it is, the man of letters who would be selected for titular honour,
if such bestowal of honours were customary, receives from the general
respect of those around him a much more pleasant recognition of
his worth.
If this be so,--if it be true that the career of the successful
literary man be thus pleasant--it is not wonderful that many should
attempt to win the prize. But how is a man to know whether or not
he has within him the qualities necessary for such a career? He
makes an attempt, and fails; repeats his attempt, and fails again!
So many have succeeded at last who have failed more than once or
twice! Who will tell him the truth as to himself? Who has power to
find out that truth? The hard man sends him off without a scruple
to that office-stool; the soft man assures him that there is much
merit in his MS.
Oh, my young aspirant,--if ever such a one should read these
pages,--be sure that no one can tell you! To do so it would be
necessary not only to know what there is now within you, but also
to foresee what time will produce there. This, however, I think may
be said to you, without any doubt as to the wisdom of the counsel
given, that if it be necessary for you to live by your work, do not
begin by trusting to literature. Take the stool in the office as
recommended to you by the hard man; and then, in such leisure hours
as may belong to you, let the praise which has come from the lips
of that soft man induce you to persevere in your literary attempts.
Should you fail, then your failure will not be fatal,--and what
better could you have done with the leisure hours had you not so
failed? Such double toil, you will say, is severe. Yes, but if
you want this thing, you must submit to severe toil.
Sometime before this I had become one of the Committee appointed
for the distribution of the moneys of the Royal Literary Fund, and
in that capacity I heard and saw much of the sufferings of authors.
I may in a future chapter speak further of this Institution, which
I regard with great affection, and in reference to which I should
be glad to record certain convictions of my own; but I allude to it
now, because the experience I have acquired in being active in its
cause forbids me to advise any young man or woman to enter boldly
on a literary career in search of bread. I know how utterly I
should have failed myself had my bread not been earned elsewhere
while I was making my efforts. During ten years of work, which I
commenced with some aid from the fact that others of my family were
in the same profession, I did not earn enough to buy me the pens,
ink, and paper which I was using; and then when, with all my
experience in my art, I began again as from a new springing point,
I should have failed again unless again I could have given years
to the task. Of course there have been many who have done better
than I,--many whose powers have been infinitely greater. But then,
too, I have seen the failure of many who were greater.
The career, when success has been achieved, is certainly very
pleasant; but the agonies which are endured in the search for that
success are often terrible. And the author's poverty is, I think,
harder to be borne than any other poverty. The man, whether rightly
or wrongly, feels that the world is using him with extreme injustice.
The more absolutely he fails, the higher, it is probable, he will
reckon his own merits; and the keener will be the sense of injury
in that he whose work is of so high a nature cannot get bread,
while they whose tasks are mean are lapped in luxury. "I, with
my well-filled mind, with my clear intellect, with all my gifts,
cannot earn a poor crown a day, while that fool, who simpers in
a little room behind a shop, makes his thousands every year." The
very charity, to which he too often is driven, is bitterer to him
than to others. While he takes it he almost spurns the hand that
gives it to him, and every fibre of his heart within him is bleeding
with a sense of injury.
The career, when successful, is pleasant enough certainly; but when
unsuccessful, it is of all careers the most agonising.
CHAPTER XII ON NOVELS AND THE ART OF WRITING THEM
It is nearly twenty years since I proposed to myself to write
a history of English prose fiction. I shall never do it now, but
the subject is so good a one that I recommend it heartily to some
man of letters, who shall at the same time be indefatigable and
light-handed. I acknowledge that I broke down in the task, because
I could not endure the labour in addition to the other labours of
my life. Though the book might be charming, the work was very much
the reverse. It came to have a terrible aspect to me, as did that
proposition that I should sit out all the May meetings of a season.
According to my plan of such a history it would be necessary
to read an infinity of novels, and not only to read them, but so
to read them as to point out the excellences of those which are
most excellent, and to explain the defects of those which, though
defective, had still reached sufficient reputation to make them
worthy of notice. I did read many after this fashion,--and here
and there I have the criticisms which I wrote. In regard to many,
they were written on some blank page within the book; I have not,
however, even a list of the books so criticised. I think that the
Arcadia was the first, and Ivanhoe the last. My plan, as I settled
it at last, had been to begin with Robinson Crusoe, which is the
earliest really popular novel which we have in our language, and
to continue the review so as to include the works of all English
novelists of reputation, except those who might still be living
when my task should be completed. But when Dickens and Bulwer died,
my spirit flagged, and that which I had already found to be very
difficult had become almost impossible to me at my then period of
life.
I began my own studies on the subject with works much earlier than
Robinson Crusoe, and made my way through a variety of novels which
were necessary for my purpose, but which in the reading gave me no
pleasure whatever. I never worked harder than at the Arcadia, or
read more detestable trash than the stories written by Mrs. Aphra
Behn; but these two were necessary to my purpose, which was not only
to give an estimate of the novels as I found them, but to describe
how it had come to pass that the English novels of the present
day have become what they are, to point out the effects which they
have produced, and to inquire whether their great popularity has on
the whole done good or evil to the people who read them. I still
think that the book is one well worthy to be written.
I intended to write that book to vindicate my own profession as
a novelist, and also to vindicate that public taste in literature