HE other day, at the Literary Fund dinner, in an eloquent and practical address, the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone condemned the encouragement too often given to an aspirant for literary honours simply on the ground of the disadvantages under which said aspirant had written. The Premier said that to support and encourage a book simply because it was written by a mechanic, or by some person who could not be expected from his position to write a book, was an injury to the man himself and to society. All literary works should stand on their own merits, and no man has a right to claim indulgence because of the educational disadvantages under which his book may be produced. I commend this practical philosophy to some of my numerous correspondents. An editor suffers much at the hands of uncommissioned contributors; but most from amateur writers, from men and women and young people who, somehow discovering that they can turn a rhyme or build up a reasonably good sentence, suddenly believe they have a call to the world of Letters. Thereupon they commence to pester editors everywhere; but as I am here and there credited with the weakness of editorial courtesy, they all seem to fix upon me for their first or last efforts at publication. In many cases their MSS. are accompanied by long confidential letters, appeals to one's feelings, attacks on one's sympathy. Now and then I detect something of merit in an amateur article ; but too often the merit lies in the evident disadvantages of the circumstances under which the paper has been written. Misled on this tack, I return a civil reply and say, "Try again; you may succeed." The writer tries again. He does not succeed. I say so. His MS. goes back. Then I have been unkind; I have raised hopes only to blight them. Sometimes the MS. is lost or mislaid, the writer having omitted to put his name or address upon it. Then it cannot be returned; and the young author pours out his wrath wildly upon the editor. I sympathise with him, despite the suffering he causes; but I tell him now, as I have told him before, that if he would retain his literary treasures, he must keep copies of them. This is easily done; the manifold letter writer and the copying press are old institutions. Another troublesome contributor is the young author whose first article is accepted. Seeing himself in print, he thinks he has not only become famous, but has laid the foundation of his fortune. He launches out in social expenses; he suddenly appears in literary society, and wants to join an Art Club. He has read those wonderful paragraphs of London Correspondents about the vast sums which are paid to successful authors; he expects for his article a cheque equal to a king's ransom; like the Scotchman (who made a guinea. joke in Punch, and came from Edinburgh to spend a week in London, on the strength of having all his expenses paid), he is disappointed. He gets over this, however, on the hope of becoming a constant contributor; but finding his other MSS. rejected, he comes to the conclusion that the editor is jealous of his success, and at the same time pounces on the discovery, and declares it in writing, that the editor is not a gentleman. Solemnly I caution this vast crowd of young and old that literature, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, is a forlorn hope. It makes my heart ache to see the pale faces, the anxious eyes that haunt the outer passages of editorial rooms, and the offices of publishing houses. Everybody seems to think, not only that he can write, but that he can live by his pen. The young aspirant is jostled by an army of parsons and barristers, and gentlemen in Government employment, educated men not wholly dependent upon journalism and literature; as a rule, this active and clever army writes well; its industry is enormous; it makes the profession utterly impossible for thousands of other outsiders who swarm up from the country in the hope of taking a place in the ranks. At best, literature gives even comparatively successful men but a hard crust, though Mr. Jacox, in "Aspects of Authorship," very properly contends that the loaf of bread earned by the competent author is not so hard and crusty as it was. Nevertheless, he cannot help quoting some of the best known instances of disappointment, even among successful men :-"Mr. Carlyle glances grimly at the Heynes dining on boiled peasecods; the Jean Pauls on water; the Johnsons bedded and boarded on fourpence halfpenny a day. So does Longfellow at Johnson and Savage rambling about the streets of London at midnight, without a place to sleep in; at Otway, starved like a dog; at Goldsmith, penniless in Green Arbour Court. Next to the 'Newgate Calendar, the biography of authors is the most sickening chapter in history." In spite of modern successes, I would repeat the question asked by Thackeray in 1843: "How much money has all the literature in England in the Three per Cents. ?" Look in our own times at the widows of eminent men who are living on the scanty pittance of the Civil List. I could mention a score of |