In the page for correspondence you will find a letter from a workman, interesting in many respects; and besides, sufficiently representing the kind of expostulation now constantly made with me, on my not advertising either these letters, or any other of my writings. These remonstrances, founded as they always are, very politely, on the assumption that every one who reads my books derives extraordinary benefit from them, require from me, at least, the courtesy of more definite answer than I have hitherto found time to give.
In the first place, my correspondents write under the conviction,—a very natural one,—that no individual practice can have the smallest power to change or check the vast system of modern commerce, or the methods of its transaction.
I, on the contrary, am convinced that it is by his personal conduct that any man of ordinary power will do the greatest amount of good that is in him to do; and when I consider the quantity of wise talking which has passed in at one long ear of the world, and out at the other, without making the smallest impression upon its mind, I am sometimes tempted for the rest of my life to try and do what seems to me rational, silently; and to speak no more.
But were it only for the exciting of earnest talk, action is highly desirable, and is, in itself, advertisement of the best. If, for instance, I had only written in these letters that I disapproved of advertisements, and had gone on advertising the letters themselves, you would have passed by my statement contemptuously, as one in which I did not believe myself. But now, most of my readers are interested in the opinion, dispute it eagerly, and are ready to hear patiently what I can say in its defence.
For main defence of it, I reply (now definitely to my correspondent of the Black Country):—You ought to read books, as you take medicine, by advice, and not advertisement. Perhaps, however, you do take medicine by advertisement, but you will not, I suppose, venture to call that a wise proceeding? Every good physician, at all events, knows it to be an unwise one, and will by no means consent to proclaim even his favourite pills by the town-crier. But perhaps you have no literary physician,—no friend to whom you can go and say, “I want to learn what is true on such a subject—what book must I read?” You prefer exercising your independent judgment, and you expect me to appeal to it, by paying for the insertion in all the penny papers of a paragraph that may win your confidence. As, for instance, “Just published, the —th number of ‘Fors Clavigera,’ containing the most important information on the existing state of trade in Europe; and on all subjects interesting to the British Operative. Thousandth thousand. Price 7d. 7 for 3s. 6d. Proportional abatement an large orders. No intelligent workman should pass a day without acquainting himself with the entirely original views contained in these pages.”
You don’t want to be advised in that manner, do you say? but only to know that such a book exists. What good would its existence do you, if you did not know whether it was worth reading? Were you as rich as Crœsus, you have no business to spend such a sum as 7d. unless you are sure of your money’s worth. Ask some one who knows good books from bad ones to tell you what to buy, and be content. You will hear of ‘Fors,’ so, in time;—if it be worth hearing of.
But you have no acquaintance, you say, among people who know good books from bad ones? Possibly not; and yet, half the poor gentlemen of England are fain now-a-days to live by selling their opinions on this subject. It is a bad trade, let me tell them. Whatever judgment they have, likely to be useful to the human beings about them, may be expressed in few words; and those words of sacred advice ought not to be articles of commerce. Least of all ought they to be so ingeniously concocted that idle readers may remain content with reading their eloquent account of a book, instead of the book itself. It is an evil trade, and in our company of Mont Rose, we will have no reviewers; we will have, once for all, our book Gazette, issued every 1st of January, naming, under alphabetical list of authors and of titles, whatever serviceable or worthy writings have been published during the past year; and if, in the space of the year following, we have become acquainted with the same thoroughly, our time will not have been ill-spent, though we hear of no new book for twelve months. And the choice of the books to be named, as well as the brief accounts of them given in our Gazette, will be by persons not paid for their opinions, and who will not, therefore, express themselves voluminously.
Meantime, your newspapers being your present advisers, I beg you to observe that a number of ‘Fors’ is duly sent to all the principal ones, whose editors may notice it if they choose; but I will not pay for their notice, nor for any man’s.
These, then, are my immediate reasons for not advertising. Indirect ones, I have, which weigh with me no less. I write this morning, wearily, and without spirit, being nearly deaf with the bell-ringing and bawling which goes on here, at Florence, ceaselessly, in advertisement of prayers, and wares; as if people could not wait on God for what they wanted, but God had to ring for them, like waiters, for what He wanted: and as if they could think of nothing they were in need of, till the need was suggested to them by bellowing at their doors, or bill-posting on their house-corners. Indeed, the fresco-painting of the bill-sticker is likely, so far as I see, to become the principal fine art of modern Europe: here, at all events, it is now the principal source of street effect. Giotto’s time is past, like Oderigi’s; but the bill-poster succeeds: and the Ponte Vecchio, the principal thoroughfare across the Arno, is on one side plastered over with bills in the exact centre, while the other side, for various reasons not to be specified, is little available to passengers.
The bills on the bridge are theatrical, announcing cheap operas; but religious bills, inviting to ecclesiastical festivities, are similarly plastered over the front of the church once called “the Bride” for its beauty; and the pious bill-stickers paste them ingeniously in and out upon the sculptured bearings of the shields of the old Florentine knights. Political bills, in various stages of decomposition, decorate the street-corners and sheds of the markets; and among the last year’s rags of these, one may still read here and there the heroic apostrophe, “Rome! or Death.”