THE HAPPY LIFE
Most people want to be happy if they can. I suppose it may be safely set down without fear of contradiction that no one who is sane and healthy wilfully elects to be miserable. Yet the secret of happiness seems to be solved by very few. People try to be happy in all sorts of queer ways—in speculation, land-grabbing, dram-drinking, horse-racing, bridge-playing, newspaper-running, and various other methods which are more or less suited to their constitutional abilities—but in many cases these channels, carefully dug out for the reception of a perpetual inflowing of the stream of happiness, appear very soon to run dry. I have been asked scores of times what I consider to be the happiest life in the world, and I have always answered without the least hesitation—the Life Literary. In all respects it answers perfectly to the description of the “Happy Life” portrayed by that gentle sixteenth-century poet, Sir Henry Wotton:—
How happy is he born and taught
That serveth not another’s will,
Whose armour is his honest thought,
And simple truth his utmost skill.
Herein we have the vital essence of all delight—honest thought and simple truth—and in the “serveth not another’s will,” glorious liberty. For chiefest among the joys of the Life Literary are its splendid independence, its right of free opinion, and its ability to express that opinion. An author is bound to no person, no place, and no party, unless he or she wilfully elects to be so bound. To him, or to her, all the realms of Nature and imagination are entrance-free—the pen unlocks every closed door—and not only is the present period of time set out like a stage-scene for contemplation and criticism, but all the past ages, with their histories, and the rise and fall of their civilizations, arrange themselves to command in a series of pictures for the pleasure of the literary eye and brain; and it is just as easy to converse in one’s own library with Plato on the immortality of the soul as it is good-humouredly to tolerate Mr. Mallock and his little drawing-room philosophies. For a book is more or less the expression of the mind, or a part of the mind, of its writer, and, inasmuch as it is only with the moral and intellectual personalities of our friends and enemies that we care to deal, it matters little whether such personalities be three or four thousand years old, or only of yesterday. And to live the Life Literary means that we can always choose our own company. We can reject commoners and receive kings, or vice versâ. The author who is careful to hold and to maintain all the real privileges and rights of authorship is a ruler of millions, and under subjection to none. The position is unique and, to my thinking, unequalled.
There are many, of course, who will by no means agree with me as to the superior charm of the Life Literary over all other lives—and such objectors will be found mostly in the literary profession itself. Unsuccessful authors—particularly those who are in any way troubled with dyspepsia—will be among them. “Tied” authors also—and by “tied” authors I mean the unhappy wretches who have signed contracts with publishers several years ahead, and are, so to speak, dancing in fetters. Authors who count the number of words they write per day, like potatoes, and anxiously calculate how much a publisher will possibly give for them per bushel, are not likely to experience any very particular “happiness” while they are measuring out halfpence in this fashion. And authors who run after “society” and want to be seen here, there, and everywhere, are bound to lose the gifts of the gods one by one as they scamper helter-skelter through the world’s Vanity Fair, while they may be perfectly sure that the “great” or swagger persons with whom they seek to associate will be the first to despise and neglect them in any time of need or trouble, as well as the last to support or help them in any urgent cause which might be benefited by their assistance.