And, no doubt, the young story-writer went away sorrowful, in spite of the acceptance of his story—which, after all, was only lacking in that quality which you will find lacking in all the writing of the day, save in that by one or two exceptional writers, who, by their isolation, the more forcibly point the moral.
A wonderful literary machine! The editor's phrase very nearly hits off the situation. As we have the linotype to set up the written words with a minimum of human agency, we really seem to be within measurable distance of a similar automaton that will produce the literature to be set up without the intrusion of any flesh-and-blood author. In this connection I may perhaps be permitted to quote a sentence or two from myself, written à propos a certain chameleonesque writer whose deservedly popular works are among the contemporary books that I most value:
A peculiar skill seems to have been developed among writers during the last twenty years—that of writing in the manner of some master, not merely with mimetic cleverness, but with genuine creative power. We have poets who write so like Wordsworth and Milton that one can hardly differentiate them from their masters; and yet—for this is my point—they are no mere imitators, but original poets, choosing, it would seem, some old mask of immortality through which to express themselves. In a different way from that of Guy de Maupassant they have chosen to suppress themselves, or rather, I should say, that, whereas De Maupassant strove to suppress, to eliminate, himself, their method is that of disguise.
In some respects they remind one of the hermit-crab, who annexes some beautiful ready-made house, instead of making one for himself. But then they annex it so brilliantly, with such delightful consequences for the reader, that not only is there no ground for complaint, but the reader almost forgets that the house does not really belong to them, and that they are merely entertaining tenants on a short lease.
It is not that one is not grateful to writers of this type. Indeed one is. They not only provide us with genuine entertainment, but, by the skill born of their fine culture, they make us re-taste of the old masters in their brilliant variations. One has no complaint against them. Far from it. Only one wonders why they trouble to attach their own merely personal names to their volumes, for, so far as those volumes are concerned, there is no one to be found in them answering to the name of the ostensible author.
Suppose, for example, that the author's name on the title-page is "Brown." Well, so far as we can find out by reading, "Brown" might just as well be "Green." In fact, there is no "Brown" discoverable—no individual man behind the pen that wrote, not out of the fulness of the heart, or the originality of the brain, from any experience or knowledge or temperament peculiar to "Brown," but out of the fulness of what one might call a creatively assimilated education, and by the aid of a special talent for the combination of literary influences.
We have had a great deal of pleasure in the reading, we have admired this and that, we may even have been astonished, but I repeat—there is no "Brown." In private life "Brown" may be a forceful and fascinating personality, but, so far as literature is concerned, he is merely a "wonderful literary machine." He has been able, by his remarkable skill, to conjure every other writer into his book—except himself. The name "Brown" on his title-page means nothing. He has not "made his name."
The phrase "to make a name" has become so dulled with long usage that it is worth while to pause and consider what a reality it stands for. What it really means, of course, is that certain men and women, by the personal force or quality of their lives, have succeeded in charging their names—names given them originally haphazard, as names are given to all of us—with a permanent significance as unmistakable as that belonging to the commonest noun. The name "Byron" has a meaning as clear and unmistakable as the word "mutton." The words "dog" and "cat" have a meaning hardly more clearly defined than the name "Burns" or "Voltaire." An oak-tree can no more be mistaken for a willow than Shakespeare can be confused with Spenser. If we say "Coleridge," there is no possibility of any one thinking that perhaps we meant "Browning."
The reason, of course, is that these names are as unmistakably "made" as a Krupp gun or a Sheffield razor. Sincere, intense life has passed into them, life lived as the men who bore those names either chose, or were forced, to live it; individual experience, stern or gentle, in combination with an individual gift of expression.
All names that are really "made" are made in the same way. You may make a name as Napoleon made his, through war, or you may make it as Keats made his, by listening to the nightingale and worshipping the moon. Or you may make it as Charles Lamb made his, merely by loving old folios, whist, and roast pig. All that is necessary—granted, of course, the gift of literary expression—is sincerity, an unshakable faithfulness to yourself.
In really great writers—or, at all events, in those writings of theirs by which they immortally exist—there is not one insincere word. The perishable parts of great writers will, without exception, be found to be those writings which they attempted either in insincere moments, or at the instigation of some surface talent that had no real connection with their deep-down selves.