patron, ā his avowal that the credit of the work ought to be
divided between tliem, ā just as to-day the inventor of a
mechanical improvement, and the capitalist who supplies the
money wherewith to perfect and secure it, often take out a
patent jointly. But the Art of Printing, and the general
diffusion of knowledge and literary appetite, have abolished
patrons, by abolishing the necessity which evoked them ; so
that there is now but one real patron. The Public, and nearly
all dedications to particular individuals are affected, anti-
quated, and unmeaning.
It is a very common but a very mischievous notion, that
the writing of a book is creditable per se. On the contrary,
I hold it ^discreditable, and only to be justified by proof of
lofty qualities and generous aims embodied therein. To write
a book when you have nothing new to commimicate, ā
nothing to say tliat has not been better said already, ā that is
to inflict a real injury on mankind. A new book is only to be
justified by a new truth. If Jonas Potts, however illiterate
and commonplace, has been shipwrecked on Hudson's Bay,
and has travelled thence overland to Detroit or Montreal by
a route previously unknown, then he may give us a book ā
if he will attempt no more than to tell us as clearly as pos-
sible wliat he experienced and saw by the way, ā Avhich will
have a genuine value, and which the world may weU thank
him for ; and so of a man who, having manufactured charcoal
all his days, should favor us with a treatise on burning char-
coal, showing what was the relative value for that use of the
452 MISCELLANIES.
various woods ; liow long they should be on fire respectively ;
how much wood should be burned in one pit, and how the
burning sliould be managed. Every contribution, however
rude and humble, to our knowledge of nature, and of the
means by which her products may most advantageously be
made subservient to our needs, is beneficent, and worthy of
our regard. But the fabrication of new poems, or novels, or
essays, or histories, which really add nothing to our stock of
facts, to our fund of ideas, Imt, so far as they have any signifi-
cance, merely resay what has been more forcibly, intelligibly,
happily, said already, ā this is a work which does less than
no good, ā which ought to be decried and put down, under
the general police duty of abating nuisances. I would have
every writer of a book cited before a competent tribunal and
made to answer the questions : " Sir, what proposition is this
book intended to set forth and commend ? What fact does
it reveal ? What is its drift, its purport ? " If it embodies
a new truth, or even a new suggestion, though it seem a
very mistaken and absm-d one, make way for it ! and let it
fight its own battle ; but if it has really no other aim than to
be readable, therefore salable, and thus to win gold for its
author and his accomplices, the printer and publisher, then
let a bonfire be made of its manuscript sheets, so that the
world may speedily obtain from it all the light it is capable
of imparting.
I once received a letter from a somewhat noted novelist,
pressing me to read thoroughly one of his works just issued,
which the cover proclaimed his " greatest novel," and which
he wished me to commend to general favor, saying he was
anxious to do his part toward the emancipation of the poor
from their unmerited degradations and miseries. I was not
able to read the book, ā editors receive too many requests
like this ; but I replied to the letter ; saying, in substance :
" You wish to improve the condition of the poor. Well :
allow me to suggest a way. Take hold of the first piece of
vacant earth you can gain permission to use, plant an acre
with potatoes, cultivate and gather them, give one half to
LITERATURE AS A VOCATION. 453
such poor creatm-es as really need them, and save the balance
for your o\vn subsistence while you grow more next year. In
this way, you will do more toward meliorating the condition
of the poor than you could by -waiting novels from July to
eternity." My philanthropic friend did not take my advice,
ā he did not even thank me for it ; but he soon after started
a newspaper, whereof he sent me the first five numbers, in
every one of which I received a most unmerciful flagellation.
The paper is since dead ; but I have no doubt its editor con-
tinued his castigations to the last, and died laying it on with
whatever vigor he had left. / could not help that. I ncA^er
made any reply; but my convictions, as expressed in my
letter to him, remain unchanged to this day.
Yet let us not seem to disparage the Author's vocation ;
nay : we dare not, we cannot. There is no other earthly
exercise of power so Olympian, pervasive, enduring. Eeflect
how many generations, dynasties, empires, have flourished and
vanished since the Book of Job was "written ; and how many
more will rise and fade, leaving that sublime old poem still
fresh and li^dng. See Cicero, Virgil, Horace, Li^y, still
studied and admired by the patrician youth of nations un-
known to Eome in her greatness, while all other power per-
taining to the Pagan era of the Eternal City has long since
passed away forever. Nay : consider how Plutarch, ^schylus,
Plato, living in a world so very different from ours, ā in
many respects, so infantile compared with ours, ā can still
insti-uct the wisest and delight the most critical among us,
and you may well conclude that to WTite nobly, excellently,
is a far loftier achievement than to rule, to conquer, or to kill,
and that the truly great author looks down on the little strifes
and agitations of mankind from an eminence which monarchs
can but feebly emulate, and the ages can scarcely wear away.
But eminence in any good or great undertaking implies
intense devotion thereto, ā implies patient, laborious exertion,
either in the doing or in the preparing for it. He who
454 MISCELLANIES.
fancies greatness an accident, a lucky hit, a stroke of good
fortune, does sadly degrade the achievement contemj)lated,
and undervalue the unerring wisdom and inflexible justice
whereAvith tlie universe is ruled. Ask who among modern
poets have "s\Titten most admirably, so far as manner and
finish are regarded, and the Ln-er of l*oetry least acquainted
with Literary History will unhesitatingly answer, ā Pope,
Goldsmith, Gray, Moore, Campbell, Bryant, Longfellow, Ten-
nyson. He may place others above any or all of these in
power, in genius, in force ; but he cannot doubt that these
have most smoothly, happily, faultlessly, sung what they had
to sing, ā that their thoughts have lost less than almost any
others' by inharmony or infelicity of expression. Then let him
turn to Biography, and he will find that these men have ex-
celled nearly or quite all others in patient study, in fastidious
determination to improve, so long as improvement was prac-
ticable ; in persistent labor, so long as labor could possibly
avail. It was quite easy for Pope to say, " The things I have
written fastest have always pleased most " ; for he always
studied and thought himself full of a subject before he began
to write about it, and his composition was merely a setting
down and arranging of ideas already present in his mind.
And yet I apprehend that Posterity has not ratified his judg-
ment ; I mean, that his works which " pleased most " when
first published have not stood the test of time as well as some
others. The world of letters knew him as a pains-taking,
laborious, correct writer, even before he had established his
claim to be honored as a great one. And the works he %vrote
so rapidly he afterward revised, corrected, altered, recast,
before allowing the public to see them, to the sad encourage-
ment of blasphemy among his printers, so that on one occa-
sion his publisher decided that it would be easier to compose
in type afresh than attempt to correct one of his proofs. No
man ever wTote better, so far as style is regarded ; because no
man was ever more determined to publish nothing that he
could improve. So Goldsmith considered four lines of his
" Deserted Village " a good day's work, and the world has
LITERATURE AS A VOCATION. 455
ratified his judgment. With the kindred " Elegy " of Gray,
this belongs to a school of poetry which I do not transcend-
ently adniire ; but its excellence after its kind, I presume, no
one has ever doubted. And it is related of Moore, the most
fastidious and the most melodious writer of our time, that a
friend once travelled with him all day, and was surprised by his
taciturn moodiness and abstraction, until, just before night,
his face lighted up, and he exclaimed, like the old Greek : " I
have it ! That will do ! " ā then explained to his startled com-
panion that he had been all day trying to adjust a rhyme or
counterpart to a line in one of his then unfinished poems, and
had but just now succeeded. It is thus that works which the
world prizes and embalms are composed. A style termed
"easy" is generally obtained at great expense of time and
effort, whether in the immediate composition or in the life-
long preparation for it ; and he who calculates on storming
the ramparts of literary fame by the audacity, the impetuosity,
of his genius, will very certainly be rejDulsed and discomfited.
The " kingdom of heaven " may " suffer violence," but the
republic of letters resents and repels it.
0, my erring friend ! delighted that your son of fourteen
years or your daughter of twelve has written a page of not
intolerable verses, I pray you to lay this lesson to heart !
I can sympathize with your paternal partiality ; I do not
wonder that you are proud of your child's achievement, ā for
the writing even of bad verses at so tender an age is an
achievement in one sense, and may plausibly be deemed by
you a sign of promise, ā but you are thinking of the figure
those verses would cut in the Poet's Corner of some journal,
of the praises they would elicit and the distinction they
would confer on their writer ; and against these fond, fool-
ish, perilous fancies I most earnestly protest and warn you.
If your child has any talent ā which is possible, though not
probable ; for precocity in any but secret authorship argues
a low idea of the difficulties of creditable composition, and a
taste easily satisfied, because of the poverty of its concep-
456 MISCELLANIES.
tions of excellence, ā still, it is possible your child has talent,
(which I am confident he did not inherit) ; and, i/he has, you
are taking the very course to ruin him. Puff him up with
the conceit that he is an author at fourteen, and he will pret-
ty surely have proved himself a fool before he is twenty-five.
Bvit read over his composition with him, and kindly point out
its faults or weaknesses ; encourage him to try again, and
avoid these errors if possible, but studiously withhold his pro-
ductions from publicity, and impress him with the truth that
to ^\Tite feebly or badly, ā as he cannot now help doing if he
writes at all, ā is only creditable or notewortliy as it renders
possible his writing well after he shall have attained intellec-
tual and physical maturity. Thus cultivate, chasten, and
ripen his faculty, but never stimulate it ; and there is a possi-
bility that it may ultimately ally him to the great and good
of past ages ; but let him set out with the conceit that he is
a prodigy, and his wreck and ruin are inevitable.
It only remains to me to speak more especially of my own
vocation, ā the Editor's, ā which bears much the same rela-
tion to the Author's tliat the Bellows-blower's bears to the
Organist's, the Player's to the Dramatist's, Jullien or Listz to
AVeber or Beethoven. The Editor, from the absolute neces-
sity of the case, cannot speak delilierately ; he must write
to-day of to-day's incidents and aspects, though tliese may
be comi;)letely overlaid and transformed by the incidents and
aspects of to-morrow. He must Avi-ite and strive in the full
consciousness that whatev-er honor or distinction he may ac-
quire must perish with the generation that bestowed them, ā ā¢
Avitli the thunders of applause that greeted Kemlile or Jenny
Lind, with the ruffianism that expelled Macready, or the
checri'ul laugh that erewhile rewarded the saUies of Burton
or Placide. No otlier public teacher lives so wholly in the
present as the Editor ; and the noblest affirmations of unpop-
ular truth, ā the most self-sacrificing defiance of a base and
selfish Public Sentiment that regards only the most sordid
ends, and values every utterance solely as it tends to pre-
LITERATURE AS A VOCATION. 457
serve quiet and contentment, while tlie dollars fall jingling
into the merchant's drawer, the land-jobber's vault, and the
miser's bag, ā can but be noted in their day, and w4th their
day forgotten. It is his cue to utter silken and smooth say-
ings, ā to condemn Vice so as not to interfere with the pleas-
ures or alarm the consciences of the vicious, ā to praise and
champion Liberty so as not to give annoyance or offence to
Slavery, and to commend and glorify Labor without attempt-
ing to expose or repress any of the gainful contrivances by
which Labor is plundered and degraded. Thus sidling dex-
terously between somewhere and nowhere, the Able Editor of
the Nineteenth Century may glide through life respectable
and in good case, and lie down to his long rest with the non-
achievements of his life emblazoned on the very whitest mar-
ble, surmounting and glorifying his dust.
There is a different and sterner path, ā I know not whether
there be any now qualified to tread it, ā I am not sure that
even one has ever followed it implicitly, in view of the certain
meagerness of its temporal rewards and the haste wherewith
any fame acquired in a sphere so thoroughly ephemeral as
the Editor's must be shrouded by the dark waters of oblivion.
This path demands an ear ever open to the plaints of the
wronged and the suffering, though they can never repay ad-
vocacy, and those who mainly support newspapers wiU be
annoyed and often exposed by it; a heart as sensitive to
oppression and degradation in the next street as if they were
practised in Brazil or Japan ; a pen as ready to expose and
reprove the crimes whereby wealth is amassed and luxury en-
joyed in our own country at this hour, as if they had only been
committed by Turks or Pagans in Asia some centuries ago.
Such an Editor, could one be found or trained, need not ex-
pect to lead an easy, indolent, or wholly joyous life, ā to be
blessed by Archbishops or followed by the approving shouts
of ascendant majorities ; but he might find some recompense
for their loss in the calm verdict of an approving conscience ;
and tlie tears of the despised and the friendless, preserved
from utter despair by his efforts and remonstrances, might
freshen for a season the daisies that bloomed above his grave.
458 MISCELLANIES.
Let lue conclude by restating the main propositions which
pervade and vivify this essay. Literature is a noble calling,
but only when the call obeyed by the aspirant issues from a
world to be enlightened and blessed, not from a void stomach
clamoring to be gratified and filled. Authorship is a royal
priesthood; but woe to him who rashly lays unhallowed
hands on the ark or the altar, professing a zeal for the welfare
of the Eace only that he may secure the confidence and sym-
pathies of others, and use them for his own selfish ends ! If
a man have no heroism in his soul, ā no animating purpose
beyond living easily and faring sumptuously, ā I can imagine
no gTcater mistake on his part than that of resorting to author-
ship as a vocation. That such a one may achieve what he
regards as success, I do not deny ; but, if so, he does it at
greater risk and by greater exertion than would have been
required to win it in any other pursuit. No : it cannot be
wise in a selfish, or sordid, or sensual man to devote himself
to Literature ; the fearful self-exposure incident to this way
of life, ā the dire necessity which constrains the author to
stamp his own essential portrait on every volume of his works,
no matter how carefully he may fancy he has erased, or how
artfully he may suppose he has concealed it, ā this should
repel from the vestibule of the temple of Fame the foot of
every profane or mocking worshipper. But if you are sure
that your impulse is not personal nor sinister, but a desire
to serve and ennoble your Race, rather than to dazzle and be
served by it ; that you are ready joyfully to " shun delights,
and live laborious days," so that thereby the well-being of
mankind may be promoted, ā then I pray you not to believe
that the world is too wise to need further enlightenment, nor
that it would be impossible for one so humble as yourself to
say aught whereby error may be dispelled or good be diffused.
Sell not your integrity ; barter not your independence ; beg of
no man the privilege of earning a liveliliood by Authorship ;
since that is to degrade your faculty, and very probably to
corrupt it ; but, seeing through your own clear eyes, and utter-
ing the impulses of your own honest heart, speak or write as
LITERATURE AS A VOCATION. 459
truth and love sliall dictate, asking no material recompense,
but living by the labor of your hands, until recompense shall
be voluntarily tendered to secure your service, and you may
frankly accept it without a compromise of your integrity or a
perd. to your freedom. Soldier in the long warfare for Man's
rescue from Darkness and Evil, choose not your place on the
battle-field, but joyfully accept that assigned you ; asking not
whether there be higher or lower, but only whether it is
here that you can most surely do your proper work, and meet
your full share of the responsibdity and the danger. Believe
not that the Heroic Age is no more ; since to that age is only
requisite the heroic purpose and the heroic soul. So long as
ignorance and evil shall exist, so long there will be work for
the devoted, and so long will there be room in the ranks of
those who, defying obloquy, misapprehension, bigotry, and
interested craft, struggle and dare for the redemption of the
world. " Of making many books there is no end," though
there is happily a speedy end of most books after they are
made ; but he who by voice or pen strikes his best blow at
the impostures and vices whereby our race is debased and
paralyzed may close his eyes in death, consoled and cheered
by the reflection that he has done what he could for the eman-
cipation and elevation of his kind.
POETS AND POETEY.
WE are all born poets. Not that every tenanted cradle
holds an undeveloped Shakespeare, ā far from it.
Demonstrated intellectual greatness is the prerogative of the
few ; it is " the vision," not " the faculty divine," which is the
birthright of the many. The grime of smoke and care and
sin heavily inwraps, incases, japans, many souls, even in
early childhood, ā as we see children of seven years prema-
turely haggard with suffering, squalor, and vice, ā but there
was a time when these imps were poets, lacking only the
power of expression. The child who conjectured that the
stars were but chinks or crannies of heaven, ā gimlet-holes
bored in the adamantine firmament to let God's glory
through ; the prattler who watched the darkening evening
sky, until, espying the first bright speck through its dusky
medium, she rapturously exclaimed, " There ! God has made
a star ! " ā were happy only in expressing the common im-
pulses of childhood. As all young children are actually the-
ists, ā believers in a veritable, personal, conscious, omnis-
cient, omnipotent Author and Euler of all things, and utterly
averse to substituting for this natural, tangible conception
any thin attenuation of Pantheistic fog or "fire-mist," any
blank Atheistic assumption, which gives to blind Chance or
inexorable Fate the name of Law, ā so the uncorrupted child
instinctively perceives the poetic element in Nature, realizes
that we are not the mere combinations of gases and alkalies
to which the chemist's crucible would reduce us, but beings
of mysterious origin and untold spiritual force, inhabiting a
POETS AND POETRY. 461
world only less weird and wondrous than ourselves. The
Frenchman, who was astounded by the discovery that he had
been talking prose all his life, might have been equally
amazed by the assurance that he formerly thought, if he did
not utter, poetry, ā and this was as true as the other. Every
close observer must have noted how naturally the talk of un-
schooled, unspoiled children takes on poetic vestments, ā be-
comes dramatic not merely, but hyperbolic and imaginative
in a high degree. Emerson truly says that the first person
who called another pupijy or ass was a poet, ā perceiving in
the individual contemplated a spiritual aptitude to bark or
bray, as the case might be. I only add that ihe first child
who ever saw a man making an ass of himself, ā which, with
all deference to our common progenitor, I apprehend was the
first child that ever clearly saw anything whatever, ā at once
perceived the spiritual similitude, and probably blurted out
the ungracious truth. All savage tribes ā that is, all nations
still in their mental childhood ā have a poetic literature, if
any ; their legends, their traditions, their romances, their
chronicles, are all poetic, alike in substance and in diction.
Of this truth our Aborigines afford a ready demonstration.
A stagnant or decrepit race, like the Chinese, may have their
prosaic ordinances, statutes, records, statistics, philosophies ;
not so a vigorous, elastic, Teutonic tribe or Saracenic empire.
Thus we naturally find some of the most admired and re-
markable poems ā the Book of Job, the Hebrew Psalms, the
Iliad, and the Bagavhat Geta of the Hindoos ā dating back to
the infancy of Society, as the Inferno, and Shakespeare's and
]\lilton's masterpieces, ally themselves with the infancy of
modern civilization, or of the Protestant development thereof
"We laugh at Nimrod Wildfire and kindred etchings of the
hyperbolic or exaggerated modes of speech indicative of a
new country, ā new, that is, to the race now inhabiting it ;
the story of a AVestern soil so fertile that a crowbar, carelessly
thrust into it overnight, is found bristling with spikes and
tenpenny nails next morning; of the pumpkin-^dne, that
outran the steed of the rather astonished traveller ; of the
462 MISCELLANIES.
Vermonter, whose chance companion in the cutter behind a
rather lively nag at length perplexedly inquired, " Wliat grave-
yard is tliis we are passing through ? " and was answered,
" Only the milestones along the road," ā but a new people
are iiTesistibly prone to these exaggerations. The young
American, who goes abroad, finds himself obliged to moderate
and tone down his ordinary conversation to adapt it to the
general level ; to speak of Niagara, or Lake Superior, or the
glaciers of Switzerland, in the langviage that rises spontane-
ously to his lips, would jar the nerves of his pohshed listeners,
and he would very possibly be reminded, by some highly
respectable citizen, that the view from the foot of the great
cataract at Niagara could not possibly be that of a falling
ocean, since the narrowest ocean is three thousand miles
across, while Niagara is hardly a mile. The well-bred Eng-
lishman of to-day is so fenced in, incrusted, barricaded, with
respectabilities, proprieties, decencies, that the poetic element
ā nay, even the faculty of appreciating it ā seems choked
out of him ; hence, the British poets of to-day find a warmer
and more general appreciation with us than at home ; and I
cannot doubt that there are many more Americans than
Britons familiar with the works of Scott, Byron, and I tliink
even Shakespeare. Yet the English are our kinsmen ; equal,
but dissimilar, in mental capacities and aptitudes, ā only we
are still in the poetic phase of our national life, out of which
they have passed. We are too cultivated and critical to pro-
duce a great epic, ā our Washington is no Acliilles, no Alex-
ander, no demigod, but a sensible, conscientious, conservative
Virginia planter, lieartily loyal to Church and King ; yet one
whom insane tyranny and regal folly converts at last into a
rebel, ā of course, a more formidable rebel than any natural
agitator, leveller, demagogue, or even philosophizing democrat,
could be ; for, when he draws the sword against the throne he
has revered and prayed for from childhood, be sure there are