waste of time before they discover their own powers and the best use of them. Innumerable are the persons gifted with originality of thought and keen insight into life and character who fain would write, but that they fear to fail, who cannot muster the energy and courage without which talent is useless, and who cherish the common and entirely erroneous idea that only by means of personal influence can amateurs gain a hearing. Any writer who has achieved even the most modest success is besieged by requests from these feeble folk for introductions and assistance in making known their literary aspirations. If the importance of the plain rule, so emphatically insisted on in these pages, were only generally realized that the only sure passport to success is good work-this common dream of struggling into print by clinging to those who are practically powerless to help any but themselves, would cease to cause bitter disappointments. People who believe they can write, and who mean to succeed, will trust to themselves alone, and by patient perfecting of style and matter, and due study of the hints contained in this book, will win for themselves that happiness which is one of the greatest we know-the first certainty of success. "Before you attempt to write on any subject be quite certain that you can say something fresh about it,' was the pencilled remark of a very distinguished historian, the editor of a famous magazine, when returning a rejected contribution. The first effect of his trenchant words on the recipient of them was a keen feeling of humiliation which seems to characterize the shock of rejection as peculiarly as does an intoxicating joy the first moment of realized success in letters. The unlucky aspirant, reading by the light of those severe remarks his rejected article, made the profound discovery that it was but "vacant chaff well meant for grain," and resolved to make the weighty words of the critic the test of all future work. And that writer, after many a bitter disappointment and defeat, had cause to be thankful for the advice so given; for in time the kindly interest of another literary man, no other than Charles Dickens-ever ready to encourage even the faintest promise of ability-secured him a small success, and so by slow degrees he learnt the great lesson of how to write so as, without help or favour, to secure due payment for readable work. The great requirements of a good literary style are summed up in this word "readable," so much in use in the profession of letters. The most ponderous learning on any subject and the most conscientious efforts to convey instruction cannot succeed without some graces of style. The art of being brief; of touching heavy subjects with a light hand; and of sparing all superfluous detail does not come by nature to all those who have something to say which is well worth writing, but till this art is gained the best efforts of the beginner must prove failures. It is not alone sufficient to have something fresh to say; for the rapidly developing judgment of the great mass of the public requires that it be well and brightly conveyed, and the priceless ornament of style is now of such importance that without it success is well nigh impossible. Carefully considered hints for its attainment will be found in this work, and it is scarcely possible to over-estimate its value to all who aim at success in literature. "There are wrongers of subjects as well as writers on them," says Coleridge, and our English literary history abounds in mournful examples of solid and laborious works in which no reader can take delight. Crabbe tells us of how in the elder days of heavy literature "Our patient fathers trifling themes laid by, And rolled o'er laboured works the attentive eye; Page after page the much enduring men Our nicer palates lighter labours seek, Cloyed with a folio number once a week." And since Crabbe's day we have become even more imperative in our demand for a finished and yet easy style in literature, and such a book as Grote's Greece -a perfect monument of patient research and inexhaustible learning-fails to please the cultivated minds it appeals to, because of the "fatal deficiency of style," which, as the Times reviewer pointed out, would, in some measure, prevent it from superseding the otherwise inferior works on the same subject which better pleased the public taste. It cannot be too strongly impressed on beginners that one great secret of success lies in having "a good notion of style," such as Burnet attributes to Charles the Second. Rousseau's rule for letter-writing does not apply to deliberate authorship. "Begin," "Begin," he says, "without knowing what you are going to say, and end without knowing what you have said." The opposite course is the one recommended by those whose success gives them the right to speak, and the opinion of all is best summed up by Disraeli when he says that mastery of your subject is the true secret of style. To know what you would say and to say it with freedom and with individuality is the great point. Those who by too great an effort after originality of manner fix attention on their style instead of on their subject, have fallen into one of the. commonest errors of the present day. In too many cases an exquisitely finished method of saying very commonplace things is the only offering writers, who have been overpraised as "stylists," have to make to literature. The first attempts of young writers cannot be expected to succeed, save in the rare cases of brilliantly gifted men and women who have suddenly dazzled the world by beautiful works which spring perfect from their godlike brains. Even amongst the best authors there has always been a large proportion who sighed over the impossibility of suppressing the early works on which they tried their prentice hands, and yet the first step must be taken before the writer can know his own powers. Doubtless much is sometimes learnt in suffering while the aspirant is bowed down by the curt rejection or cold reception which is so often his portion. Keats, in a manly letter on the subject of the first unkind criticisms on "Endymion," says: "I know my strength and weakness now, and I must have written it before finding them out. Had I been nervous about its being a perfect piece, and with that view asked advice, and trembled on every page, it would not have been written, for it is not in my nature to fumble. I leaped desperately into the sea and thereby have become better acquainted with its quicksands, and rocks, and soundings than if I had stayed on the green shore and took tea and comfortable advice. I was never afraid of failure for I would sooner fail than not be amongst the greatest." This diffidence, so well described by the poet who did indeed win himself a place amongst the immortals in spite of the chilling reception of his first work, is, we are convinced, a much more general characteristic of beginners than the rash presumption with which they are more frequently credited. The story of Burns's early literary ventures is a pathetic example of how discouraging amateur criticism can be. "He may be a good man," he writes, when writhing under the patronising rebukes of a critical nonentity, "but he crucifies me. I cannot help shedding a tear to the memory of two songs that had cost me some pains and that I valued a good deal, but I must submit." And then this-the sweetest singer who ever sang the deep feelings of a passionately poetic nature-proceeds meekly to alter his best poems to please a pompous unknown, only remembered now because he had the honour of knowing Burns. But inasmuch as the young author, however gifted he be in thought, however prepared for his work by long study, still stands in need of aid, this book is offered to him as a guide in the various branches of that great profession in which there is room for all who bring to their delightful work freshness of thought and skill in conveying it. And assuredly no art is so emphatically twice blessed as that of authorship. The mere happiness of writing and of losing oneself in one's subject is great, but beyond this there is the thrilling pleasure of success and the hope of being numbered amongst those whose names are household words, and whose books have brightened and bettered their fellow men. It is but a commonplace, to dwell on the un ending influence of books, and on the remarkable manner in which literary work, not great in itself, may call forth the best efforts of others. Miss Edgeworth's Irish tales inspired Scott to celebrate the beauties of his own dearly-loved country; Richardson's novels provoked Fielding to write that he might caricature them; admiration for Dickens awakened the powers of Bret Harte and gave us a new school of writing; the old edition of the "Faery Queen" lying on his mother's window seat made a poet of Cowley; Pope found his inspiration in Ogilby's Homer; and Erasmus learnt to write in his own perfect style by the loving study of Terence and Jerome. And the pleasures of authorship are not merely dreams of a dim future but realities of the present-the moment of writing. Everyone knows how loth was Thackeray to shut up his puppet show and write "finis" when his books came to an end; how dear to the heart of Dickens were the men and women he created for us and with what regret he said farewell to them; and Trollope has recorded how he found it impossible to put a literary end to the characters he portrayed and delighted in. We have no instances, or perhaps none, of authors who gave up their art and ceased to write whilst write they could, and there must be something strangely fascinating in a profession which demands such unremitting work and yet gives its followers such unfailing happiness. Great indeed is the change in the position of authors since the old days, when such bitter lamentations went up from the oppressed slaves of the pen. Then, only a scanty band of writers won their way to the front and carried off the few prizes that literature bestowed with so chary a hand. But when we read of their success we are apt to forget how small was the reading public of those days, how narrow was the class they appealed to during their lives, although they may be now universally read. Very limited, comparatively, was the circulation of the B |
