Will you allow me to explain one or two points in which I am generally misunderstood? I meant to have asked your leave to do so at some length, but have been entirely busy, and can only say, respecting two of your questions, what in my own mind are the answers.
I. "How many authors are strong enough to do without advertisements?"
None: while advertisement is the practice. But let it become the fashion to announce books once for all in a monthly circular (publisher's, for instance), and the public will simply refer to that for all they want to know. Such advertisement I use now, and always would.
II. "Why has he determined to be his own publisher?"
I wish entirely to resist the practice of writing for money early in life. I think an author's business requires as much training as a musician's, and that, as soon as he can write really well, there would always, for a man of worth and sense, be found capital enough to enable him to be able to print, say, a hundred pages of his careful work; which, if the public were pleased with, they would soon enable him to print more. I do not think young men should rush into print, nor old ones modify their books to please publishers.
III. And it seems to me, considering that the existing excellent books in the world would—if they were heaped together in great towns—overtop their cathedrals, that at any age a man should think long before he invites his neighbors to listen to his sayings on any subject whatever.
What I do, therefore, is done only in the conviction, foolish, egotistic, whatever you like to call it, but firm, that I am writing what is needful and useful for my fellow-creatures; that if it is so, they will in due time discover it, and that before due time I do not want it discovered. And it seems to me that no sound scholar or true well-wisher to the people about him would write in any other temper. I mean to be paid for my work, if it is worth payment. Not otherwise. And it seems to me my mode of publication is the proper method of ascertaining that fact. I had much more to say, but have no more time, and am, sir, very respectfully yours,
John Ruskin.
FOOTNOTES:
[150] This letter refers to an article on Mr. Ruskin's peculiar method of publication which appeared in the World of May 26, 1875. It was entitled "Ruskin to the Rescue," and with the criticism to which Mr. Ruskin alludes, strongly approved the idea of some reform being attempted in the matter of the publication of books. Mr. Ruskin began the still-continued method of publishing his works in 1871; and the following advertisement, inserted in the earlier copies of the first book thus published—"Sesame and Lilies"—will give the reader further information on the matter.