There is a deep meaning in these elective affinities. Each personality is more or less completely the complement of some other. Doctor Holmes thinks it should never be forgotten by the critic that "every grade of mental development demands a literature of its own; a little above its level, that it may be lifted to a higher grade, but not too much above it, so that it requires too long a stride—a stairway, not a steep wall to climb. The true critic is not the sharp captator verborum; not the brisk epigrammatist, showing off his own cleverness, always trying to outflank the author against whom he has arrayed his wits and his learning. He is a man who knows the real wants of the reading world, and can prize at their just value the writings which meet those wants."
There is also another side of the picture. Doctor Holmes does not forget the trials of authorship. The writer who attains a certain measure of popularity "will be startled to find himself the object of an embarrassing devotion, and almost appropriation, by some of his parish of readers. He will blush at his lonely desk, as he reads the extravagances of expression which pour over him like the oil which ran down upon the beard of Aaron, and even down to the skirts of his garments—an extreme unction which seems hardly desirable. We ought to have his photograph as he reads one of those frequent missives, oftenest traced, we may guess, in the delicate, slanting hand which betrays the slender fingers of the sympathetic sisterhood.
"A slight sense of the ridiculous at being made so much of qualifies the placid tolerance with which the rhymester or the essayist sees himself preferred to the great masters in prose and verse, and reads his name glowing in a halo of epithets which might belong to Bacon or Milton. We need not grudge him such pleasure as he may derive from the illusion of a momentary revery, in which he dreams of himself as clad in royal robes and exalted among the immortals. The next post will probably bring him some slip from a newspaper or critical journal, which will strip him of his regalia, as Thackeray, in one of his illustrations, has disrobed and denuded the grand monarque. He saw himself but a moment ago a colossal figure in a drapery of rhetorical purple, ample enough for an Emperor, as Bernini would clothe him. The image breaker has passed by, belittling him by comparison, jostling him off his pedestal, levelling his most prominent feature, or even breaking a whole ink bottle against him as the indignant moralist did on the figure in the vestibule of the opera house—the shortest and most effective satire that ever came from that fountain of approval and commendation. Such are some of the varied experiences of authorship."
Out of his literary career as a successful writer, Doctor Holmes was able to formulate many rules for the self-protection of authors, which were adopted unanimously at an authors' association which was held in Washington last September, and the remainder of his "talk" is devoted to extracts from their proceedings. Appended are a few of them:
Of visits of strangers to authors. These are not always distinguishable from each other, and may justly be considered together. The stranger should send up his card if he has one; if he has none, he should, if admitted, at once announce himself and his object, without circumlocution, as thus; "My name is M. or N., from X. or Y. I wish to see and take the hand of a writer whom I have long admired for his," etc., etc. Here the author should extend his hand, and reply in substance as follows: "I am pleased to see you, my dear sir, and very glad that anything I have written has been a source of pleasure or profit to you." The visitor has now had what he says he came for, and, after making a brief polite acknowledgment, should retire, unless, for special reasons, he is urged to stay longer.
Of autograph-seekers. The increase in the number of applicants for autographs is so great that it has become necessary to adopt positive regulations to protect the author from the exorbitant claims of this class of virtuosos. The following propositions were adopted without discussion:
No author is under any obligation to answer any letter from an unknown person applying for his autograph. If he sees fit to do so, it is a gratuitous concession on his part.
No stranger should ask for more than one autograph.
No stranger should request an author to copy a poem, or even a verse. He should remember that he is one of many thousands; that one thousand fleas are worse than one hornet, and that a mob of mosquitoes will draw more blood than a single horse leech.