ANOTHER WORD TO LITERARY BEGINNERS.
Within these few years past we have from time to time given a word of warning and of encouragement to Literary Aspirants. We do not use the latter word in any disparaging sense; but simply as the only one which fully embraces the great and constantly increasing class of persons, who, as writers of matter good, bad, and indifferent, are now weekly and daily knocking for admission at the doors of Literature. We have always been favourable to giving encouragement to young writers of ability, and never a year passes but we are able to introduce a few fresh contributors to the world of periodical literature. But this encouragement must necessarily be within certain lines, otherwise evil and not good would accrue to many. We are from time to time reminded by correspondents of what a popular novelist, possibly in a half-jocular mood, advised in this matter. His advice to parents amounted to this, that if they had an educated son or daughter with no particular calling in life, but in need of one, they had only to supply him or her with pens, ink, and paper, and a literary calling might at once be entered upon. We fear too many have laid, and daily lay, this flattering unction to their souls. In the majority of cases, disappointment and heart-sickness can alone be derived from the experiment.
In order to give those outside the circle of editorial cognisance some idea of the amount of literary matter sent in by outsiders, and which falls to be adjudicated upon on its merits, we subjoin an abstract of the number of manuscripts received by us during the twelve months from August 1882 to August 1883. During that period we have had offered to us in all 3225 manuscripts, of which 2065 were contributions in prose, and 1160 in verse. These offerings varied from each other to the utmost extent both as to size and subject, from a few stanzas of verse to the bulk of a three-volume novel, and came to us from all quarters of the English-speaking world, England, Scotland, Ireland, the Continent, America, India, Africa, Australia, New Zealand, and elsewhere. Of the 2065 prose manuscripts, 300 were accepted by us for publication, or fourteen per cent. of the whole. Of the 1160 pieces of verse, only 30 were accepted, or less than three per cent. of the total. Taking the two classes of contributions together, of the 3225 manuscripts received, 330 were accepted—that is, of every hundred manuscripts received, ten were retained by us and ninety returned to their authors. If we estimate this pile of contributions according to its bulk, and allowing a very moderate average length to each manuscript, the whole, if printed, would have filled 9125 pages of this Journal, or as much as would have sufficed for eleven of our yearly volumes.
The lesson to be derived from this by literary beginners is, not to be over-sanguine as to the acceptance of any article offered to magazines, knowing the great competition that is constantly going on for a place in their pages. It is true that those who possess the literary faculty in a sufficient degree will, though not perhaps without suffering many rejections and disappointments, ultimately assert their claims and obtain the coveted place; but even in such cases, the early struggle may sometimes be severe and long-continued. Nor must contributors go away under the impression that all rejected offerings are necessarily of an inferior quality. This is far from being the case. Great numbers of the prose articles in the above enumeration of rejected contributions, were articles with which no fault might be found in a literary sense. But it must be borne in mind that a magazine is limited in its space; and that when a definite part of that space has been allotted to articles or tales which have been supplied under previous arrangements made between author and editor, the remaining space may afford but small room for the number of claimants thereto. An article, therefore, which is perfectly equal to the literary standard of a magazine, may have to be returned by the editor on various grounds, such as that the subject of the paper does not come within the scope of his present requirements, or that an article has already appeared or been accepted on the same subject, or that some one has been already engaged to write upon it; or, in short, a dozen reasons might be found, any one of which would be sufficient to cause the rejection of a given article. But what one magazine rejects another may be in need of; so that a really good article is almost certain of finding its billet somewhere.
In these circumstances, while there is nothing that need eventually discourage a capable or promising writer, there is much to make parents and guardians take warning before they set a young man or woman adrift on the sea of life with only his or her pen as a rudder. Literature, like painting, affords to persons of inferior or only mediocre powers a very precarious means of livelihood. Besides, places are not to be got in the literary any more than in the artistic world without evidence of genuine capacity being given by the claimant. The number of aspirants is no doubt from year to year being winnowed, until the grain shall be finally selected from the chaff; but the process, we admit, is not pleasant to those who do not come within the metaphorical category of grain. Scarcely a week passes but we receive letters requesting us, from the specimens of work inclosed, to say whether the contributor might hope to become a successful writer for magazines, as he or she is presently a clerk or a governess, and would wish to attain a better position, which position, ‘kind friends’—often in this same matter, if they knew it, very unkind—think, might be reached through the channel of literature. It is not difficult, as a rule, to advise in such cases. It is, stick to your present occupation, if it is only respectable, and on no account throw it up in the hope of having your name engrossed in the higher rolls of literary achievement. Even in the case of what may be called successful minor contributors to periodical literature, it can hardly be possible, we should think, for them to rely wholly upon the results for a livelihood. Nor is it necessary to do so. The kind of literary work to which we allude can, in general, be carried on side by side with the work of an ordinary occupation or profession, as it is rarely that the articles of a writer of this class are in such constant demand as to make it necessary to give his or her whole time to their production. When this combination can be maintained, a useful source of income is added, without in all cases necessarily detracting from one’s professional industry otherwise.
What we have said is not with the object of repressing literary ambition, but of preventing literary aspirants from setting out under false ideas, or quitting the successful pursuit of their ordinary occupations in the too frequently unrealised hope of rising to literary distinction. It must not be forgot that the desire to write does not necessarily comprehend the power to write well; or that, even with those who succeed in demonstrating their literary capabilities, such success is obtained without hard work and long practice. As we have said on former occasions, writers must not start, as is too often done, on the assumption that their possession of genius is to be taken for granted; genius only comes once in a while—once or twice in a generation perhaps. It is always safer to begin upon the supposition that your faculties are of the kind which, like granite, will only shine by polishing; and if genius should be evoked in the process, the polishing will not harm it. We would not wish to dim the roseate hues which the future has for those who are young; but neither would we wish to be responsible for encouraging within them hopes that are not likely to be realised, or only realised under special powers of application, or by the operation of special natural faculties.