Ephemera Critica; Or, Plain Truths About Current Literature

by John Churton Collins

Where they are extended."

And never was a man more mistaken than the old preacher who said to his congregation, "If you have a talent in your napkin, you should take care not to hide it; but if you have no talent, but only a napkin, you should not so flourish your napkin as to create the impression that it is full of talents." Why, this is just what nine men in ten who court fame have to do. Nature is kind, but seldom profuse. If she really endows a man with what, if trumpeted, would make him famous, the odds are she couples with her gifts pride, modesty, or self-respect, which, to say the least, heavily handicap him in the race for reputation. When she does not endow with the reality, she compensates by bestowing the power of acquiring the credit for it. She is, as a rule, much too thrifty to heap on the same man the keen pleasures of genuine enthusiasm and the sweets of popular applause. An impartial mother, she loves all her children, and divides her favours equally between shams and true men. This Churchill marks in his brutal way; speaking of a certain contemporary, he describes him as endowed with

"That low cunning which in fools supplies,

And amply too, the place of being wise,

Which Nature, kind, indulgent parent, gave

To qualify the blockhead for a knave."

But our business is not with knaves and blockheads, but with "gentler cattle," and the quotation demands an apology.

The importance of the art of self-advertisement, as must be abundantly clear from the preceding remarks, can scarcely be overestimated. Though it is perhaps still in its infancy, its progress during the last few years has been most encouraging. The old coarse methods so familiar to us in the past, and still successfully practised in the present—we mean mutual admiration cliques, log-rolling, and what is vulgarly known as "pulling the strings"—have been greatly improved upon and refined. Bentley's famous remark when, explaining how it was that he took to commentating, he said, that as he despaired of standing on his own legs in the Temple of Fame, he got on to the shoulders of the Ancients, appears to have suggested one of the most ingenious of modern expedients. This consists of "getting up" a memorial to some distinguished man—a statue, it may be, or modest bust. Some labour, some ability, and some learning are involved in the more cumbrous device of Bentley. But here all is simple and very easy. You are on the shoulders of your great man at a bound, and stand side by side with him in a trice. There is nothing which redounds to his credit which does not redound to your own. As the Red Indian is under the impression that in possessing himself of a scalp he possesses himself of the virtues belonging to the former owner of the scalp, so this tribute of enthusiastic admiration quietly assumes, without trouble, all that enthusiastic admiration naturally implies. Is the object of your homage a poet, a critic, a scholar, the very fact that you pay him homage is, in itself, testimony of your own right to one or other of these honourable titles. If, moreover it should happen that you know very little about the writings of the author whom you have elected to honour, this is of no consequence; for of all the disguises which ignorance can assume, "enthusiasm" is the most effective. Nor are these the only advantages of this particular method of getting reputation. The collection of subscriptions and the formation of a committee bring you into contact, or may, if judiciously managed, bring you into contact with all your distinguished contemporaries; and we know what the proverb says—"Noscitur a sociis"—a man is what his companions are.

But nothing is more effectual, for purposes of self-advertisement, than a device which has lately been practised with signal success. This consists of scraping up an acquaintance with some person, whose name is not unknown to the public,—even a second-rate novelist will do—and waiting till he dies. As there is a tide in the affairs of men, so, as we all know, there is a moment at the demise of literary men when the voracity of public curiosity knows neither distinction nor satiety. This is the moment for the self-advertiser to nick; this is the time for him to float, with his defunct friend, on the lips of men. He will find readers for anything he may choose to print—that letter with its exquisite compliments, that conversation in which his poor attainments were so generously over-estimated, or the importance of his slight literary services so much exaggerated. Of course, the value of such advertisements will be in proportion to the eminence of the subject of the reminiscences—and happy, thrice happy, those who were able to turn men like Darwin, Tennyson, and Browning to this account; their reputation may be regarded as made. But it is not always necessary to wait till great men die, though it is an experiment too bold and perilous for most aspirants to make this sort of capital out of them while they are still alive. Still audentes fortuna juvat, and it has been done. A certain minor poet published in an American magazine, not many years ago, an article entitled "A Day with Lord Tennyson," in which he represented the Laureate as turning the conversation on his (the minor bard's) poetry. We are told how the great man, after fervently reiterating a stanza of that minor bard which pleased him, requested his son to take it down in writing; how that son, though the day was cold and blowy, took it down; how Tennyson grasped, at parting, his brother poet's hand, and begged in transport that he would "come again and come often." He came, we believe, no more. But what of that? He had accomplished a feat so simple and yet so original that it may fairly be questioned whether what Mr. Burnum used to call his masterpiece was in any way comparable to it. To interview a great man, even on an assumption of equality, is, as we all know, a comparatively easy matter, but to turn the conversation of the great man into a seasonable puff of yourself requires a combination of qualities not often united in a single person. The worst of feats like these is that they must have a tendency to make great men a little shy of encouraging the acquaintance of those to whom they can be so useful. But simplicity, as Thucydides remarks, is one of the chief ingredients of greatness, and it is a quality very difficult to wear out.

If Tennyson's interviewer has ever had a rival in the important art which has been discussed—for the benefit of youthful ambition—in this article, we are inclined to think that that rival was the Rev. Aris Willmott. This now almost forgotten writer was a very voluminous author both in verse and prose; but his merits were not appreciated by an ungrateful public so much as they ought to have been. He resorted, therefore, to the following exquisitely ingenious device. He published a handsome volume, which is now before us, entitled Gems from English Literature, thus arranged: Bacon, Rev. Aris Willmott, Jeremy Taylor, Rev. Aris Willmott, Barrow, Rev. Aris Willmott, sandwiching himself regularly through the prose classics, and in the same way through the poets—Shakespeare, Rev. Aris Willmott, Milton, Rev. Aris, etc. As birthday books, press notices, interviews at home, portraits of distinguished authors in their studies, and the like are getting a little stale, we cordially recommend this rev. gentleman's expedient—it may be judiciously modified—to the notice of all who are unable to distinguish fame from notoriety.