[1] See chapters vi., x., xiv., xx.
[2] The femininely naïve hypocrisy of the following passage is amusing: "Elle se sent, elle se connaît maintenant, la voix unanime du peuple. Elle vous réáuira tous au silence, elle passera sur vos têtes comme le souffle de Dieu; elle ira entourer votre représentation nationale, et voici ce qu'elle lui dira: 'Jusqu'ici tu n'étais pas inviolable, mais nous voici avec des armes parées de fleurs et nous te déclarons inviolable. Travaille, fonctionne, nous t'entourons de 400 mille baïonnettes, d'un million de volontés. Aucun parti, aucune intrigue arrivera jusqu'à toi. Recueille-toi et agis!'"
[XXXIV]
THE OVERLOOKED AND FORGOTTEN
If we take a survey of any literature some ten or twelve years after the beginning of a great new movement in it, at the moment when the army of the new era has proved successful in the conflict, we feel as if we were inspecting a battlefield. Through the victors' shouts of triumph we hear subdued sounds of lamentation. I do not mean the cries of woe that proceed from the vanquished, retreating forces; these have deserved their defeat, and their sufferings inspire no compassion in me; the men I have in my mind are the wounded and the forgotten of the victorious army. For literary warfare, too, has its lists of "killed and missing." It is interesting to walk over the battlefield and cast a glance at the writers of the generation of 1830 who were cut off in their youth and strength, or were so severely wounded that, maimed and dumb, they thenceforth only dragged out a disabled existence.
The conditions of the literary career are such that, out of hundreds who enter for the race, only two or three reach the goal. The rest are left lying exhausted along the course. The first to give in are the unfortunates whose powers are undoubtedly inadequate, the men of fragmentary talent who have been enticed by the hope of fortune and fame, and who run on in an atmosphere of dazzling illusion until they sink exhausted and fainting, to awake in the hospital. Next fall those who, though really highly gifted, lack the peculiar combination of qualities indispensable to success in the society in which they live, those who have not the power of adapting themselves to circumstances, much less of moulding society to suit their requirements, and who are outrun by the more or less nimble mediocrities in whom the great public recognises its own flesh and blood.
The very character of the work is fatal to many. It is work that knows nothing of days of rest, that exhausts the nervous system, that cannot be done leisurely, because only that which the author produces at white heat has the power of affecting the reader with any of the emotion felt by the writer. It is work which is, as a rule, very badly paid. It is work which, being entirely intellectual, refines the senses of the workman and heightens his susceptibilities to a degree incompatible with his position and surroundings, yet which at the same time ties him to, incorporates him with, these surroundings, in which he must observe the same rules and conventions as his neighbours. Hence, in the case of many, a thirst for life, for variety, for beauty, for experience, which, remaining unslaked, preys upon the vitals, and is called by the world decline, or consumption, or madness.
Others, again, succumb to the difficulties inseparable from the author's position. The equilibrium of society depends at any given moment upon a tacit agreement that the whole truth shall not be openly proclaimed. Yet in every society there exist exceptional individuals whose only task, whose mission, is to speak the whole truth. These are its poets, its authors. Unless these speak the truth they degenerate into mere sycophantic formalists. Hence the author is perpetually on the horns of a dilemma. He must choose between ignoring what he ought to proclaim—a proceeding which dulls his intellect and renders him useless—and the dangerous step of speaking out plainly, which makes him the object of such hostility as is only possible in literature. It is a hostility which has at its disposal a thousand tongues if it desires to speak, but also a thousand gags if it desires to impose silence concerning an author and his works; and in the case of a man whose very life depends upon publicity this is the greatest of all dangers, that he may be quietly and treacherously slain with the air-gun of silence.