But a Tory cannot be tolerant of Grub Street, or stick at simple honesty in criticism. He is bound to associate genius with prosperity, or some of his friends’ fame will suffer, and discriminating readers will grow overbold in their choice of polite literature. Fame depends nowadays on one’s appreciations of one’s well to do contemporaries. It is the solemn business of all “respectable” critics to keep literature as the sacred gift and heirloom of a close corporation of perfectly “respectable” and inoffensive writers.
But perhaps time will bring a sense of humor to Mr. Martin. We hope so, as we have a tenderness for every man who cares for and writes essays. Mr. Martin’s attitude surprised us somewhat, as he really can write an amusing essay and we expect much toleration from an essayist. But he may live to grow mellow and learn to love stout heretics. Every independent writer since Job has appeared “fresh” to smug complacency, and an essayist should never countenance smuggery, if he would hold any status with book men.
It always appears ridiculous to a clique that other men should fight for and demand a hearing. But we must honestly aver our egotistical opinion that there is fully as much brains in Grub Street, frowned upon as it is by the respectable tin gods of contemporary criticism and literature, as there is in other and more respectable coteries of literature.
The true ideal of a democracy is a natural aristocracy of intellect, recruited in every generation from all classes—the survival of the fittest. But just now almost everything in our social, intellectual, political, and even religious activity, caters to the mass of lowest intelligences and their gross prejudices.
In the Fly Leaf the Beast will find no such pandering to his muddy and addled brains. There are plenty of periodical muck-heaps for him to wallow in. This thing is intended for our intellectual coevals and contemporaries, and we shall not be easily convinced that, in this seething time of wholesome change, there are not enough such people in America to sympathize with and support a periodical with such aims.
The Fly Leaf and its writers appeal to that rare and delightful being, the discriminating reader. Bookish folk constitute a division in the human species, a class by themselves, and as a Booklover as well as a quillfeather, I firmly believe that only those who are possessed of some intellectual and catholic interests of this sort will be found human and worthy enough to be admitted to Heaven. The Almighty will surely not destroy his own peace by allowing the fools to outnumber and outvote Him. The dull and unintelligent deserve to be lost. An acute philosopher (but why dissimulate to delude the dull, since the philosophic quip is my own?) has divided the human race into thinkers and readers—and mere bipeds. Why remain simply a humble biped when you can read the Fly Leaf and hope for Heaven?
It should be distinctly understood by all readers who visit the book stores with the idea of getting the most for their money, that the Fly Leaf cannot be put upon the scale and weighed against the picture periodicals. It tips hopelessly in the air, and this airiness and lightness and intangible delicacy is the characteristic of all thought. It flies into the air while mud settles at once into its congenial mire. Thought and wit and fancy always fly up in this fashion; and this is the honor and distinction of the Fly Leaf and its staff, whether we win or lose.
We candidly do not appeal to the gross and clumsy wits of the many-headed, although we conserve the tradition of the democracy of fine spirit in literature. Nature’s aristocracy of intellect is all that makes humanity tolerable. We appeal to the Remnant, without which democracy would be the unmitigated dominion of the Beast; and luckily we see evidences everywhere of the rapid growth of this class and of a salutary revolt against the dominion of the Beast in journalism, literature, and even in politics. Let it grow—for no nation can take its proper place in civilization which is governed by its tail instead of by its head.
The Man in the Moon.