A recent publication furnishes the following statistical facts relating to the book trade in our own country: "Books have multiplied to such an extent in the United States that it now takes 750 paper-mills, with 2000 engines in constant operation, to supply the printers, who work day and night, endeavoring to keep their engagements with publishers. These tireless mills produce 270,000,000 pounds of paper every year. It requires a pound and a quarter of old rags for one pound of paper, thus 340,000,000 pounds of rags were consumed in this way last year. There are about 300 publishers in the United States, and near 10,000 book-sellers who are engaged in the task of dispensing literary pabulum to the public."
It may appear somewhat paradoxical to assert that literature is declining whilst books and authors are multiplying to such a fearful extent. Byron wrote:
"'Tis pleasant, sure, to see one's name in print;
A book's a book, although there's nothing in 't."
True enough; but books are not always literature. A man may become an author without ceasing to be an ignoramus. His name may adorn a title-page without being recorded in ære perenne. He may attempt to write himself up a very "lion" in literature, whilst good master Slender may be busily engaged "in writing him down an ass."
Not one book in a thousand is a success; not one success in ten thousand wreathes the fortunate author with the laurel crown, and lifts him up into the region of the immortals. Tell me, ye who prate about the literary glory of the nineteenth century, wherein it consists? Whose are
"The great, the immortal names
That were not born to die?"
I cast my eyes up the long vista toward the Temple of Fame, and I behold hundreds of thousands pressing on to reach the shining portals. They jostle each other by the way, they trip, they fall, they are overthrown and ruthlessly trampled into oblivion, by the giddy throng, as they rush onward and upward. One, it may be two, of the million who started out, stand trembling at the threshold, and with exultant voices cry aloud for admittance. One perishes before the summons can be answered; and the other, awed into immortality by the august presence into which he enters, is transformed into imperishable stone.
Let us carefully scan the rolls of the literature of our era, and select, if we can, poet, orator, or philosopher, whose fame will deepen as it runs, and brighten as it burns, until future generations shall drink at the fountain and be refreshed, and kindle their souls at the vestal flame and be purified, illuminated and ennobled.
In poetry, aye, in the crowded realms of song, who bears the sceptre?—who wears the crown? America, England, France and Germany can boast of bards by the gross, and rhyme by the acre, but not a single poet. The poeta nascitur is not here. He may be on his way—and I have heard that he was—but this generation must pass before he arrives. Is he in America? If so, which is he? Is it Poe, croaking sorrowfully with his "Raven," or Willis, cooing sweetly with his "Dove"? Is it Bryant, with his "Thanatopsis," or Prentice, with his "Dirge to the Dead Year"? Perhaps it is Holmes, with his "Lyrics," or Longfellow, with his "Idyls." Alas! is it not self-evident that we have no poet, when it is utterly impossible to discover any two critics in the land who can find him?
True, we have lightning-bugs enough, but no star; foot-hills, it may be, in abundance, but no Mount Shasta, with its base built upon the everlasting granite, and its brow bathed in the eternal sunlight.