SUCCESS IN LITERATURE INTRODUCTORY SUCCESS is the reward of labours conducted with knowledge and judgment; and the man of letters, in the course of his reading, meets with little that is more instructive than the evidences of this truth presented by the works and lives of those masters of the pen of whom he would wish to be, if only in the humblest sense, a disciple. Often indeed he has to regret that to discover exactly how their magnificent achievements were accomplished is not possible. The record of their labours is imperfect; and in the case of the very greatest (respecting whom it would be natural to wish to know most) often either very imperfect or altogether wanting. Yet, even so, any diligent reader who will note what is available, and does not disdain to take from writers of lesser fame what cannot be gathered from the great, may easily collect from the three sources of (1) the advice which great authors have bequeathed to their successors; (2) the evidences afforded by their works, and (3) the particulars of their lives which are recorded, a very considerable mass of information respecting the manner in which books that have "lived" have been written. Were such gleanings set down in a commonplace book it would soon undoubtedly become a ponderous composition, a rudis indigestaque moles, replete with flat contradictions - which would constitute one of its most valuable lessons. The compiler would also discover that there was no end to his task: a gem of counsel may always remain to be picked up in some most unexpected spot. Such too would be the shapelessness of the whole, that it would be, in all probability, of little service to any one except its compiler. Yet, notwithstanding all its crudeness, such a record of action and counsel would possess a certain value of actuality that could hardly be surpassed. A book must have some arrangement, if it is to be readable, or even intelligible. In the case of a modest work, which is to gather of literary counsels and records as much as condensation will bring within its narrow limits, there arises, unfortunately, from its mere arrangement an inevitable danger of a grave misapprehension. The order in which the various topics are placed may be misunderstood as intended to represent some prescribed course to be pursued by those who would profit by the counsel which the work contains. Be it therefore said at once that no pretension of that, or of any other didactic kind, is here either intended, or even advocated as desirable. There are to be gathered together, from many sources, of very diverse value, some things that may be regarded as counsels of perfection, and others which represent merely what various writers have found personally helpful; precepts of the literary great; observations on the life of letters; thoughts respecting the aims which an author may have as his objective; remarks on the equipment and the labours which the accomplishment of his aims may demand, and sundry other cognate gleanings: but all these not as representing any course, either of studies or of progress, but merely as a harvesting of scattered thoughts, whence every man may select for himself such counsels or suggestions as he judges likely to prove of assistance in his work. The profession of letters is a vocation that has neither its like nor a rival. It is essentially intellectual, and of all intellectual callings the one which at once confers the great est benefit both upon its votaries and upon mankind. It is a vocation in whose ranks, gathered from every age and every land, are numbered names so august, and of so great renown that every man of letters may with reason take for his motto that aphorism which Cicero quotes as golden: “Inter bonos bene agier oportet" (De Officiis, III, xvii, 70). "Among the good a man ought to conduct himself worthily." no "Writing," observes Lord Bacon, "maketh an exact man," whilst Addison writes, "There is no other method (saving books) of fixing those thoughts which arise and disappear in the mind of man, and transmitting them to the last period of time: other method of giving a permanency to our ideas and preserving the knowledge of any particular person, when his body is mixed with the common mass of matter, and his soul retired into the world of spirits. Books are the legacies that a great genius leaves to mankind, which are delivered down from generation to generation, as presents to the posterity of those who are yet unborn (Spectator, No. 166). All other arts of perpetuating our ideas continue but a short time. It was not altogether without reason that Alexander declared Achilles "to be called happy" because he had found a Homer to recall his deeds (Arrian, Anabasis, I, 12, 1), a thought which Horace reproduced in his observation, "Many brave men lived before Agamemnon; but all of them, unlamented and unknown are overwhelmed with endless obscurity, because they were destitute of a sacred bard." Vixere fortes ante Agamemnona Nocte, carent quia vate sacro. CARMINA, IV, ix, 25. To belong to the company that has included the greatest of human minds; to enjoy the development of his own abilities in that highest form which secures exactitude; to safeguard, and to transmit the whole treasure of human discovery and wit, and to have the power not only to win but also to bestow immortal recollection - these are the ultimate privileges of the man of letters. There are other aspects of the literary life. There are as many aspects of everything as there are minds which make a serious effort to understand it. In the Oxford Dictionary literature is declared to be "the most seductive, the most deceiving and the most dangerous of all professions." The same re |