AUTHORS AND CRITICS.
At the gracious Christmas season of the year we are reminded by nearly every post of our duty towards our neighbours, meaning thereby not merely those who live within what Wordsworth, with greater familiarity than precision, has defined as ‘an easy walk,’ but, with few exceptions, mainly of a party character, all mankind. The once wide boundaries of an Englishman’s sphere of hatred are sorely circumscribed. We are now expected not only to love all peoples, which in theory is easy enough, particularly if we are no great travellers, but to read their publications in translations unverified by affidavit, which in practice is very hard. Yet if we do not do it, we are Chauvinists, which has a horrid sound.
Much is now expected of a man. Even in his leisure hours, when his feet are on the hob, he must be zealous in some cause, say Realism; serious, as he reflects upon the interests of literature and the position of authors; and, above all and hardest of all, he must be sympathetic. Irony he should eschew, and levity, but disquisitions on duty are never out of place.
This disposition of mind, however praiseworthy, makes the aspect of things heavy, and yet this is the very moment selected by certain novelists, playwrights, and irresponsible persons of that kind, to whom we have been long accustomed to look for relaxation, to begin prating, not of their duty to please us, but of our duty to appreciate them. It appears that we owe a duty to our contemporaries who write, which is not merely passive, that is, to abstain from slandering them, but active, namely, to read and admire them.
The authors who grumble and explain the merits of their own things are not the denizens of Grub Street, or those poor neglected souls to one of whom Mr. Alfred Austin lately addressed these consolatory words:
‘Friend, be not fretful if the voice of fame,
Along the narrow way of hurrying men,
Where unto echo echo shouts again,
Be all day long not noisy with your name.’
No; it is the shouted authors who are most discontented; the men who have best availed themselves of all the resources of civilization, who belong to syndicates, employ agents, have a price-current, and know what it is to be paid half a dozen times over for the same thing. Even the prospect of American copyright and taxing all the intelligence of a reading Republic—even this does not satisfy them. They want to be classics in their own lifetime, and to be spoken and written of as if they were already embalmed in the memory of a grateful nation. To speak or write lightly of departed genius is offensive, but people who have the luck to be alive must not expect to be taken quite so seriously. But they do. Everything is taken seriously in these grim days, even short stories. There is said to be a demand for short stories, begotten, amongst many other things, by that reckless parent, the Spirit of the Age. There is no such demand. The one and only demand poor wearied humanity has ever made, or will ever make, of the story-teller, be he as long-winded as Richardson or as breathless as Kipling, is to be made self-forgetful for a season. Interest me somehow, anyhow; make me mindless of the room I am sitting in, of the people about me; soothe me, excite me, tickle me, make me better, make me worse; do what you like with me, only make it possible for me to keep reading on, and a joy to do so. This is our demand. There is nothing unreasonable in it. It is matter of experience. Authors have done all this for us, and are doing it to-day. It is their trade, and a glorious one.