LITERARY BYWAYS.

LONDON: WILLIAM ANDREWS & CO.,
5, FARRINGDON AVENUE, E.C.
1898.

Preface.

In the following pages no attempt has been made to add to the many critical works authors bring under the notice of the public. My aim in this collection of leisure-hour studies is to afford entertaining reading on some topics which do not generally attract the reader’s attention.

It is necessary for me to state that three of the chapters were originally contributed to the columns of the Chambers’s Journal, and by courtesy of the Editor are reproduced in this volume.

William Andrews.

The Hull Press,
July 5th, 1898.

Contents.

LITERARY BYWAYS.

Authors at Work.

interest of the public in those who write for its entertainment naturally extends itself to their habits of life. All such habits, let it be said at once, depend on individual peculiarities. One will write only in the morning, another only at night, a third will be able to force himself into effort only at intervals, and a fourth will, after the manner of Anthony Trollope, be almost altogether independent of times and places. The nearest approach to a rule was that which was formulated by a great writer of the last generation, who said that morning should be employed in the production of what De Quincey called “the literature of knowledge,” and the evening in impassioned work, “the literature of power.”

But habits, however unreasonable they may be, are ordinarily very powerful with authors. One of the most renowned writers always attired himself in evening dress before sitting down to his desk. The influence of his attire, he said, gave dignity and restraint to his style. Another author, of at least equal celebrity, could only write in dressing gown and slippers. In order that he might make any progress, it was absolutely essential that he should be unconscious of his clothes. Most authors demand quiet and silence as the conditions of useful work. Carlyle padded his room, in order that he might not be annoyed by the clatter of his neighbours. On the other hand, Jean Paul Richter, whose influence is visible throughout nearly the whole of Carlyle’s writings, would work serenely in the kitchen with his mother attending to her domestic duties, and the children playing around him. In an article contributed by Carlyle to the Edinburgh Review on Richter, we get some interesting facts about this truly great man. The following is reproduced from Döring. “Richter’s studying or sitting apartment, offered about this time (1793),[1] a true and beautiful emblem of his simple and noble way of thought, which comprehended at once the high and the low. Whilst his mother, who then lived with him, busily pursued her household work, occupying herself about stove and dresser, Jean Paul was sitting in a corner of the same room, at a simple writing-desk, with few or no books about him, but merely with one or two drawers containing excerpts and manuscripts. The jingle of the household operations seemed not at all to disturb him, any more than did the cooing of the pigeons, which fluttered to and fro in the chamber—a place, indeed, of considerable size.” Carlyle, commenting on the preceding passage, says—“Our venerable Hooker, we remember, also enjoyed ‘the jingle of household operations,’ and the more questionable jingle of shrewd tongues to boot, while he wrote; but the good thrifty mother, and the cooing pigeons, were wanting. Richter came afterwards to live in fine mansions, and had the great and learned for associates, but the gentle feelings of those days abode with him: through life he was the same substantial, determinate, yet meek and tolerating man. It is seldom that so much rugged energy can be so blandly attempered, that so much vehemence and so much softness will go together.”

Dr. Johnson’s “Dictionary” is one of the most familiar books in the English language, and the particulars of the way in which it was compiled are of considerable interest. He agreed with a number of leading London booksellers to prepare the work for £1,775, and spent seven years over the task. When he undertook it, he expected to finish it in three years. His friend, Dr. Adams, called upon him one day, and found him busy with his book, and, says Boswell, a dialogue as follows ensued. “Adams: ‘This is a great work, sir. How are you to get all the etymologies?’ Johnson: ‘Why, here is a shelf with Junius and Skinner, and others; and there is a Welsh gentleman who has published a collection of Welsh proverbs, who will help me with the Welsh.’ Adams: ‘But, sir, how can you do this in three years?’ Johnson: ‘Sir, I have no doubt that I can do it in three years.’ Adams: ‘But the French Academy, which consists of forty members, took forty years to complete their dictionary.’ Johnson: ‘Sir, thus it is—this is the proportion. Let me see: forty times forty is sixteen hundred. As three to sixteen hundred, so is the proportion of an Englishman to a Frenchman.’” This pleasantry is not reproduced to show Johnson’s vanity, but to give a glimpse of some of the books he used, and his own ideas as to the period he expected to spend over the undertaking.

Johnson fitted up an upper room like a counting house, in which were employed six copyists; and in spite of his asserted aversion from Scotchmen, he engaged no less than five of them on his book, so that his objection to the sons of Caledonia cannot have been very deeply rooted.

Many of his words were drawn from previously published dictionaries, and others he supplied himself. He spent much time in reading the best informed authors, and marked their books with a pencil when he found suitable material for his work. He would not under any consideration quote the productions of an author whose writings were calculated to hurt sound religion and morality. The marked sentences were copied on slips of paper, which were afterwards posted into an interleaved copy of an old dictionary opposite the words to which they related.

At the commencement of the work he made a rather serious mistake by writing on both sides of his paper. He had to pay twenty pounds to have it transcribed to one side of the paper only.

It has been truthfully observed that Dr. Johnson’s “Illustrations of the meanings and uses of words” is the most valuable part of the work, and shows an extraordinary knowledge of literature. Some of the definitions were characteristic of the man. Take for example the following, to be found in the first edition:—“Excise. A hateful tax levied upon commodities, adjudged, not by the common judges of property, but wretches hired by those to whom the excise is paid.—Network. Anything reticulated or decussated at equal distances, with interstices between the intersections.—Oats. A grain which in England is generally given to horses, but which in Scotland supports the people.” Sir Walter Scott related the happy retort by Lord Elibank, who said, when he heard the definition—“Yes; and where else will you see such horses, and such men.”—Patron. Commonly, a wretch, who supports with insolence, and is paid with flattery.—Pension. In England, it is generally understood to mean pay given to a state hireling for treason to his country.

Mr. Andrew Miller, bookseller, of the Strand, took the chief management of the publication, and appears to have been much disappointed at the slow progress the compiler made. He frequently pressed Johnson for more “copy,” and towards the latter part of the work became most anxious, for Johnson had drawn all his money in drafts long before he had completed the “Dictionary.”

According to Boswell, “When the messenger who carried the last sheet to Miller returned, Johnson asked him, ‘Well, what did he say?’ ‘Sir,’ answered the messenger, ‘he said, “Thank God I have done with him.”’ ‘I am glad,’ replied Johnson, ‘that he thanks God for anything.’”

The Dictionary was published in 1755 in two volumes at £4 4s. 0d., and soon went through several editions. The expenses of producing the work left Johnson a small margin of profit. It firmly established his fame.

Having referred at some length to Johnson’s “Dictionary,” let us pay some little attention to another important work of reference, the “Encyclopædia Britannica.” The first edition was issued in weekly numbers commenced in 1771, and was completed in 1773. It consisted of three small quarto volumes. The first editor was William Smellie, a studious man who made his start in life as a compositor, and left the printing office for an hour or two daily to attend the classes of the Edinburgh University. At nineteen he was employed as proof-reader, conductor and compiler of the Scots’ Magazine at a salary of sixteen shillings a week. He devised and wrote the chief articles in the “Encyclopædia Britannica.” The agreement of the work is a curiosity of literature, and reads as follows:

“Mr. Andrew Bell to Mr. William Smellie.

“Sir,—As we are engaged in publishing a ‘Dictionary of the Arts and Sciences,’ and as you have informed us that there are fifteen capital sciences, which you will undertake for, and write up the sub-divisions and detached parts of them, conforming to your plan, and likewise to prepare the whole work for the press, etc., etc. We hereby agree to allow you £200 for your trouble.”

A second edition was called for in 1776, and the proprietors offered Smellie a share in the undertaking if he would edit it; but having other pressing work on hand, he declined the proposal, and Joseph Tytler, a man of varied attainments, was engaged. He was born in 1747, and was the son of a minister of a rural parish in Scotland. After receiving a liberal education, he was placed with a surgeon at Forfar. He subsequently made a couple of voyages as a doctor in a whaling-ship to Greenland. Next he proceeded to Edinburgh with the money he had earned, with a view of completing his medical education at the University. He had no sooner got nicely settled in the Northern capital, than he married a girl in humble circumstances, a step which did not help to advance his worldly interests. He made many attempts to succeed, but always failed. Keen poverty kept his nose to the grindstone. His faculty in projecting works was much larger than his energy in carrying them out. Before he had reached the age of thirty, he commenced his labours as the editor of the “Encyclopædia Britannica.” The remuneration he received was very small; and while the work was in progress, he lodged, with his wife and family, with a poor washerwoman at the village of Duddingston, and for his writing-desk turned her wash-tub upside down.

The poor fellow never attempted to hide his poverty. It is said by a gentleman who once waited upon him, that he found him making a repast on a cold potato, which he continued eating with as much composure as if he were dining in the most sumptuous style.

The Encyclopædia was a great success, and sold to the extent of ten thousand copies; the owners of the copyright cleared £42,000. Moreover two of the owners, one a printer and the other an engraver, were paid for their respective work; yet in spite of this handsome profit, the result of Tytler’s ability, they permitted him to live with his wife and children in penury.

He could write almost on any topic, and at any time. As a proof of this, his biographer tells a good anecdote. “A gentleman in Edinburgh,” he states, “once told him he wanted as much matter as would form a junction between a certain history and its continuance to a later period. He found Tytler lodged in one of those elevated apartments called garrets, and was informed by the old woman with whom he resided that he had gone to bed rather the worse for liquor. Determined, however, not to depart without fulfilling his errand, he was shown into Mr. Tytler’s apartment by the light of a lamp, where he found him in the situation described by the landlady. The gentleman having acquainted him with the nature of the business which brought him at so late an hour, Mr. Tytler called for pen and ink, and in a short time produced about a page and a half of letterpress, which answered the end as completely as if it had been the result of the most mature deliberation, previous notice, and a mind undisturbed by any liquid capable of deranging its ideas.”

Tytler was a poet of some skill, and wrote a number of popular songs, three of which find a place in “The Celebrated Songs of Scotland.” He enjoyed the friendship of Robert Burns. In 1792 he published a prospectus of a paper to be named the Political Gazetteer; when it came under the notice of Burns he wrote to him as follows:—“Go on, sir; lay bare with undaunted heart and steady hand that horrid mass of corruption called politics and state-craft.” At the time he penned this he was an officer in the Excise, and for this and similar expressions he was rebuked by the Board of Excise. Burns described Tytler as an “obscene, tippling, but extraordinary body; a mortal who, though he drudges about Edinburgh with leaky shoes, a skylighted hat, yet that same drunken mortal is author and compiler of three-fourths of the ‘Encyclopædia Britannica,’ which he composed at half-a-guinea a week.”

We must, before dismissing Tytler, give another anecdote, although it does not relate to literature. We read that “he constructed a huge bag, and filled it full of gas, and invited the inhabitants of Edinburgh to witness his flight through the regions of space.” Mr. Tytler, it appears, slowly rose in his bag as high as a garden wall, when something went wrong with the machinery, and he was deposited head foremost “softly on an adjoining dunghill.” The “gaping crowd nearly killed themselves with laughter.” He was afterwards known as “Balloon Tytler.” He wrote a seditious placard, and had to flee to save his neck. He found a home in America, and for some time edited a paper at Salem. After a life of toil and trouble, he died in the year 1803.

Much has been said about the habits and earnings of Sir Walter Scott, and it is only necessary for us to observe that he wrote in his neatly-arranged library, where at any moment he could refer to his books. He was a most methodical man, and never had to waste time hunting up lost papers and books. He usually commenced writing between five and six, and worked until ten in the morning, and during this period it was his practice to fast. When pressed with work, he would often take breakfast at nine, and lounge about until eleven, and then write with a will until two o’clock. During the closing years of Sir Walter Scott’s life he employed William Laidlaw as his amanuensis. Laidlaw was a poet and prose writer of some merit, possessed of superior shrewdness, and highly esteemed by Sir Walter and his family. He was for many years steward at Abbotsford.

Another famous son of the North was Professor Wilson, perhaps more widely known as “Christopher North,” of Blackwood’s Magazine. He entered in a large ledger skeletons of intended articles; when he felt in the humour for working, he turned to his skeletons, selected one, and quickly clothed it with flesh and nerve. Wilson in a short time could produce a considerable quantity of original matter. Mr. J. S. Roberts, the editor of the volume of “Scottish Ballads” in the Chandos Classics series, was a boy at Blackwood’s when Wilson was the chief contributor to “Maga.” It was one of Roberts’ duties to go to Christopher North for his “copy.” He was wont to sit and amuse himself whilst the great, lion-headed man wrote or furnished an article on all manner of scraps of waste paper. One day there was a high wind, and Roberts was indiscreet enough to put Professor Wilson’s article in his hat. The result was hugely disastrous. The head-gear was blown off, and Wilson’s article was distributed in small portions over all the streets of Edinburgh. It was a frightful thing to have to go to the author and explain the catastrophe. John Wilson would swear, as the boy knew; and for a while he swore most stormily, but eventually calmed his choler, and wrote the article over again.

Professor Wilson was the author of a severe critique on the earlier poems of Alfred Tennyson, and in reply to it the poet wrote the following lines:—

“To Christopher North.

“You did late review my lays,
Crusty Christopher;
You did mingle blame and praise,
Rusty Christopher.
“When I learnt from whom it came,
I forgave you all the blame,
Musty Christopher;
I could not forgive the praise,
Fusty Christopher.

After penning the foregoing, the Laureate does not appear to have troubled himself further respecting Professor Wilson.

Let us now look at the method of a famous French author. Like many able writers, Balzac thought out every detail of a story before he commenced writing it. The places he proposed describing were visited, and the special features carefully noted. His note-books were filled with particulars of all classes of characters, for reproduction in his novels. No sooner had he made up his mind to write on a certain subject, and collected materials for his work, than he retired from the haunts of men, and declined to see even his closest friends. Letters might come, but they were not opened; he was dead to the outer world. His blinds were drawn, the sunlight shut out, and candles lighted. His ordinary costume was changed for a loose white monkish gown. The round of his daily toil was as follows:—At two in the morning he commenced writing, and continued it until six; a bath was then indulged in; at eight he took coffee, and rested until the clock marked the hour of nine. He resumed writing until noon, when an hour was occupied over breakfast. He again laboured with his pen from one to six, when his work closed for the day. He dined and conferred with his publisher, and at eight o’clock he retired to rest. This daily round often occupied two months, in which period he furnished the first rough draft of his work. The matter was usually re-written, and even when in type he would frequently alter three or four proofs. We are not surprised to learn “that he was the terror of the printers; few could decipher his ‘copy,’ and it is said that those few made a stipulation with their employer to work on it for one hour at a time.”

He was a most painstaking writer, but was never satisfied with his productions. “I took,” he said, “sixteen hours out of twenty-four over the elaboration of my unfortunate style, and I am never satisfied with it when done.”

Carlyle’s productions gave the printers much trouble, on account of the many alterations he made, and his cramped penmanship. His changes were not confined to his manuscripts; he revised his proofs to such an extent that it was frequently found easier to reset the matter than to alter it. Miss Martineau told a good story anent this subject. “One day,” she said, “while in my study, I heard a prodigious sound of laughter on the stairs, and in came Carlyle, laughing aloud. He had been laughing in that manner all the way from the printing office in Charing Cross. As soon as he could, he told me what it was about. He had been to the office to urge the printer, and the man said: ‘Why, sir, you really are so very hard upon us with your corrections; they take so much time, you see.’ After some remonstrance, Carlyle observed that he had been accustomed to do this sort of thing; that he had got works printed in Scotland, and—‘Yes, indeed, sir,’ interrupted the printer, ‘we are aware of that. We have a man here from Edinburgh, and when he took up a bit of your copy he dropped it as if it had burnt his fingers, and cried out, ‘Lord have mercy! Have you got that man to print for? Lord knows when we shall get done all his corrections.’”

Mrs. Gore was the author of many fashionable novels and other works, which won much favourable notice in her day. She did not confine all her attention to story-writing; she contributed very largely to the leading magazines, and wrote successfully for the stage. The list of her works is a long one, yet, in spite of all her tireless toil with the pen, she entered very freely into the pleasures of society. Mr. Planché visited her in Paris in 1837, and in course of a conversation she explained how she managed to find time to write so much. Said Mrs. Gore: “I receive, as you know, a few friends at dinner at five o’clock nearly every evening. They leave me at ten or eleven, when I retire to my own room, and write till seven or eight in the morning. I then go to bed till noon, when I breakfast, after which I drive out, shop, pay visits, and return at four, dress for dinner, and as soon as my friends have departed, go to work again all night as before.” Mrs. Gore died in 1861, at the age of sixty-two years. Her first book was issued in 1823, and it was followed by no less than seventy separate works. She lived for many years on the Continent, and supported her family with her pen.

Mrs. Trollope did not commence her career as an author until she had “reached the sober season of married and middle life,” yet she managed to produce no less than one hundred and fifteen volumes of fiction. In an autobiographical work, entitled “What I Remember,” by her son, Thomas Adolphus Trollope, we get some touching pictures of this wonderful woman writing her books. He speaks of her passing an extended period by the bedside of her invalid son. From about nine in the morning until eight in the evening, with “a cheerful countenance and a bleeding heart,” she entertained and nursed her patient. He generally slept about eight, when she went to her desk and wrote her fiction to amuse light-hearted readers. She worked from two to three in the morning. This was all done with the aid of green tea and sometimes laudanum. Mrs. Trollope died at the age of eighty-three years, so that it cannot be said that hard work killed her, although she did an immense quantity.

We believe that hard work seldom kills anyone. Some say that it does, and point to the fate of Southey, one of the most industrious of English men of letters, to support their assertion. The mention of his name brings to the mind scenes of sunshine and shadow. He was a lover of books, and his charming house in Lake-land contained a fine library. Here he read and worked, and life passed happily. Nothing could tempt him to leave it, not even the editorship of The Times. When bereft of reason, Southey would linger lovingly amongst the companions of happier days, his beloved books. He would play with them as a child plays with a toy. It is generally believed that hard literary labour killed him. When Dr. Charles Mackay visited Wordsworth he named the matter to him, and was told that there was no truth in it. Said Wordsworth of Southey: “He was a calm and methodical worker, and calm, steady work never kills. It is only worry and hurry that kill. Southey wrote a great deal; but he wrote easily and pleasantly to himself. Besides, only those who have tried know what an immense deal of literary work can be got through comfortably by a man who will work regularly for only four or even three hours a day. Take the case of Sir Walter Scott, for instance. What an immensity of work he got through; and yet he was always idle at one o’clock in the afternoon, and ready for any amusement, or for such change of labour as the garden or the field afforded. Southey was like him in that respect, and, though he worked hard, he always contrived to enjoy abundance of leisure. Scott died of pecuniary trouble, not of work. Southey died of grief for the loss of his wife.”

Lord Byron puzzled his friends by continual production whilst appearing to occupy himself with everything else but writing.

Hans Christian Andersen had to be alone when he composed his fairy tales. He was never able to dictate a contribution for the press. All his matter for the printer was in his own handwriting. This circumstance he named to Thiers, by whom he was informed that he dictated to an amanuensis the whole of his “History of the Consulate and the Empire.”

Miss Edgeworth wrote her stories in the common sitting-room, surrounded by her family. Some authors are able to concentrate their attention on a task and remain unconscious of anything going on around them. Says a recent writer on this topic: “Dr. Somerville told Harriet Martineau that he once laid a wager with a friend that he would abuse Mrs. Somerville in a loud voice to her face, and she would take no notice; and he did so. Sitting close to her, he confided to his friend the most injurious things—that she rouged, that she wore a wig, and such nonsense uttered in a very loud voice; her daughters were in a roar of laughter, while the slandered lady sat placidly writing. At last her husband made a dead pause after her name, on which she looked up in an innocent manner saying, “Did you speak to me?”

Southey too could write in the presence of his family. A more remarkable method of composition was that of Barry Cornwall. He composed his best poems in the busy streets of London, only leaving the crowd to enter a shop to commit to paper the verses he had made.

The poet Gray usually worked himself into the “mood” by reading some other poet, generally Spenser.

Shelley always composed out of doors sometimes on the roof tops. Trelawney describes how he found him in a grove near Florence by a pool of water; he was gazing unconsciously into the depths. Trelawney did not disturb him, but when Shelley came out of his trance he had written one of his finest lyrics, in a hand-writing that no other man could decipher.

Wordsworth mainly composed his poems during his rural rambles. It was not an unusual circumstance for him to write with a slate pencil on a smooth piece of stone his newly made lines. Surely the hillsides and lovely dales of Lake-land were fitting places for the great high priest of nature to give birth to his poetry. He repeated his poems aloud as he composed them, a practice which greatly puzzled the common people. We cannot perhaps better illustrate the strange impression it made on the country folk than by repeating an anecdote told to Dr. Charles Mackay by an American gentleman. He said—“One of his countrymen had lost his way in a vain attempt to discover Rydal Mount; had taken a wrong turn and gone three or four miles beyond or to the side of the point he should have aimed at. Meeting an old woman in a scarlet cloak, who was gathering sticks, he asked her the way to Rydal Mount. She could not tell him; she did not know. ‘Not know,’ said the American, ‘the house of the great Wordsworth?’ ‘No.’ ‘What, not the house of the man whose fame brings people here from all parts of the world?’ ‘No,’ she insisted, ‘but what was he great in?—was he a preacher or a doctor?’ ‘Greater than preacher or doctor—he was a poet.’ ‘Oh, poet!’ she replied; ‘and why did you not tell me that before? I know who you mean now. I often meet him in the woods, jabbering his pottery (poetry) to himself. But I’m not afraid of him. He’s quite harmless, and almost as sensible as you or me.’” This is the old story—a man, however great, is not much thought of in his own district.

It is generally understood that Lord Tennyson composed much of his poetry during his rural rambles.

Edwin Arnold, the editor of the Daily Telegraph, wrote his “Light of Asia” whilst travelling in the railway carriage to and from his newspaper office.

Some authors appear to be able to write at any time and in any place. Anthony Trollope did much writing in a railway train. “It was,” he says, “while I was engaged on ‘Barchester Towers’ that I adopted a system of writing, which for some years afterwards I found to be very serviceable to me. My time was greatly occupied in travelling, and the nature of my travelling was now changed. I could not any longer do it by horseback. Railroads afforded me my means of conveyance, and I found that I passed in railway carriages very many hours of my existence.... If I intended to make a profitable business of writing, and, at the same time, to do my best for the Post Office, I must turn my hours to more account than I could by reading. I made for myself, therefore, a little tablet, and I found after a few days’ exercise that I could write as quickly in a railway carriage as I could at my own desk. I worked with a pencil, and what I wrote my wife copied afterwards. My only objection to the practice came from the appearance of literary ostentation, to which I felt myself to be subject when going to work before four or five fellow passengers. But I got used to it.”

Trollope never attached any importance to a writing mood; to use his own phrase, he sat down to work just “as a cobbler sits down to make shoes.” When at home he rose at from half-past four to five o’clock daily, and, attired in his dressing-gown, he went to his writing-room. During the cold weather his old and favourite Irish servant made a fire in it before he arrived. He placed his watch before him, and he trained himself to write two hundred and fifty words every fifteen minutes, and he says that he was able to perform the feat as regularly as his watch went.

He believed that a serial was spoilt if written month by month as published. Only once during his long career did he commence publishing a story before the manuscript was completed, and that was “Framley Parsonage,” in the pages of Cornhill Magazine. It is admitted to be one of his best books. He wielded the pen of a ready writer for nearly forty years, and in this period produced an enormous quantity of work. He stands in this respect almost on a level with Sir Walter Scott. No writer of the highest genius writes like Trollope, though it was Keats’ habit to write a certain number of lines a day when he was engaged on “Endymion.” Emerson remarks “a poet must wait many days in order to glorify one.”

The late Bishop Wilberforce managed to write in his chaise even when driven over rough roads, as well as in railway carriages. His lordship appeared to be able to use his pen in most unlikely quarters.

Amongst authors noted as early risers must be included Charles Dickens. He has told us how the solemn and still solitude of the morning had a charm for him. It was seldom that he wrote before breakfast; as a rule he confined his writing between the hours of breakfast and luncheon. Dickens was by no means a rapid writer. When engaged on a novel he regarded three of his not very large pages of manuscript as a good day’s work, and four as excellent. He did not recopy his writings, although they contained numerous corrections which, however, were clearly made. Prior to commencing a new story he suffered much from despondency. He spoke of himself as “going round and round the idea, as you see a bird in his cage go about his sugar before he touches it.”

Dickens’ love of order was very marked; his writing materials were always neatly arranged, and his household was a model of order.

The highways and byways of London were familiar to him, and many happy hours were spent rambling in them. He had a theory that the number of hours engaged in literary labour should have a corresponding time spent in pedestrian exercise, and he frequently enjoyed a twenty miles’ walk.

Thackeray was not very particular as to the place or time when he wrote. He liked to perform his literary labours in a pleasant room. It is certain, from the large number of books that he produced in a limited time, that he must have written at a considerable speed. He had also the happy facility of being able to dictate his works when composing them.

Previous to commencing a book George Eliot would read all she could find bearing on the subject. Sometimes she would study over a thousand works to write one book. She spared no pains in perfecting her productions.

Charles Reade wrote much and well. He rose at eight o’clock, took breakfast at nine, and at ten commenced his literary work, which usually lasted until two in the afternoon. He wrote in his drawing-room, and when the French windows were closed no sounds from the street could be heard. When once fairly on the way with a novel he worked with rapidity. He wrote with a large pen, with very black ink, on large sheets of drab-coloured paper. Each sheet was numbered as written, and thrown on the floor, which, after a few hours’ writing, was completely covered. A maid servant gathered up the manuscript, which, after being put in order, was sent to a copyist, who made, in a round hand, a clear copy. Mr. Reade then went carefully over it, making improvements by omissions and additions. The revised sheets were once more copied for the printer. He seldom dictated a story, but had not any objection to the company of a friend in his room when busy with his pen. He would sometimes relieve the monotony of his work by watching a game of tennis on his lawn, or the gambols of his tame hares, or the traffic passing in the street at the bottom of his garden. Mr. Reade did not take any lunch; he dined late, and generally finished the day by a visit to the theatre.

Alphonse Daudet, the greatest of living French novelists, is a painstaking man, and usually spends a year in writing a story. He takes a deep interest in his work; indeed, it seems to get the mastery over him; and when engaged on “Le Nabob” he worked about twenty hours a day. He related to an interviewer his method of work, and it transpired that he carries about with him a small book, and enters in it notes bearing on his subject. Next he reproduces his jottings and expands them, and as he completes the items he severs them out of his list. His wife then takes the manuscript in hand and makes a clear copy, and, at the same time, corrects any slight errors of redundancy. Daudet goes carefully over it, making additions and polishing according to his fancy. It is afterwards rewritten for the press.

Shortly after the death of Mrs. Henry Wood, her son, Mr. Charles W. Wood, published in the Argosy some very interesting particulars of her literary life. She was a born author, and at the age when children play with dolls she was composing stories. She was a ready writer. Her powerful prize temperance tale “Danesbury House” was commenced and completed in twenty-eight days.

Respecting her manner of writing her novels, says her son: “She first composed her plot. Having decided upon the main idea, she would next divide it into the requisite number of chapters. Each chapter was then elaborated. Every incident in every chapter was thought out and recorded, from the first chapter to the last. She never changed her plots or incidents. Once thought out, her purpose became fixed, and was never turned aside for any fresh departure or emergency that might arise in the development of the story. The drama had then become to her as if it actually existed. Every minute detail of the plot was written out before a line of the story was begun. All was so elaborately sketched that anyone with sufficient power would have no difficulty in writing the story with the plot in possession. The only difference would have been the evidence of another hand.

“The plot of each novel occupied a good many pages of close, though not small writing. It would take her, generally speaking, about three weeks to think it out from beginning to end. During those times she could not bear the slightest interruption. But I have occasionally gone into her study, though never without being startled, almost awed, by the look upon her face. She would be at all times in a reclining chair, her paper upon her knees, and the expression of her eyes, large, wide-opened, was so intense and absorbed, so far away, it seemed as if the spirit had wandered into some distant realm and had to be brought back to its tenement before the matter, suddenly placed before her, could be attended to. It, indeed, took many moments to recall her attention, elsewhere concentrated.” Mr. Wood observes, “Only on rare or important occasions was such intrusion ever permitted for the thread of her ideas once broken could very seldom be resumed the same day, and, as she never wrote a line of anything when composing a plot, she would consider that the day had been partly lost or wasted.”

When Mrs. Wood was writing a story, on entering her study she consulted the outline she had prepared, and then worked on the allotted portion of her task. She did not recopy her manuscripts, yet they contained few corrections, and were very legible and as clear as print.

Miss Braddon is the author of many widely-read novels, and it is said that the profits on her works place her high amongst the first six of the best paid writers of fiction. She left the Hull stage, where she performed without any particular success under the name of Miss Seton, and took up her residence at Beverley, where she wrote her first story, “Three times dead; or the Secret of the Heath.” It was printed and published by Mr. C. R. Empson, and was brought out at a loss. At that time she was about twenty years of age. In 1861 she issued “Garibaldi, and other Poems,” the contents of this book having previously appeared in a Beverley newspaper. A year prior to that date she competed for a £5 prize, offered by Mr. Joseph Temple, for the best ode on celebrating the first tree planted in the Hull Public Park, and failed to win it. She contributed to several local newspapers. Her powerful novel, “Lady Audley’s Secret,” published in 1862, established her reputation, and by industry and skill it has been sustained. At the commencement of 1887 the sale of “Lady Audley’s Secret” had reached about 450,000 copies, Mrs. Henry Wood’s “East Lynne” 120,000 copies, and Mrs. Craik’s “John Halifax Gentleman,” 90,000 copies. Miss Braddon says “The Woman in White” inspired her to write “Lady Audley’s Secret,” “a novel of construction and character.” Wilkie Collins she regards as her literary godfather. Miss Braddon had not a single note when she wrote her most popular story. She now makes a skeleton of her tales in a small memorandum book, often not extending over a couple of pages, before she commences writing her novels. She usually writes four days a week, commencing her work at ten and concluding it at seven, and takes during that time strong tea at intervals, and occasionally a light luncheon. The other two days are devoted to riding on horseback and when possible to hunting. Respecting Miss Braddon’s method of writing, some interesting details appear in the “Treasury of Modern Biography,” and perhaps we cannot do better than draw upon it for a few facts. “By the fireside,” it is stated, “is a particularly low uncomfortable chair. In this the novelist huddles herself up with a piece of thick cardboard resting on her lap, and a little ink-bottle held firmly against it with her left hand. This apparently cramped position appears to be favourable to the composition, for the pen moves over the great square slips of paper, and the corrections are few and far between.” Her copy is very clear and carefully punctuated, and is somewhat masculine in style. At one time she wrote a bold hand, but reduced its size, because she had to cover more paper with her pen than when she wrote a small hand. She wears a tailor’s thimble to protect the middle finger from the brand of the ink.

Mr. James Payn was for many years a busy and successful literary man. He conducted the Cornhill Magazine, having previously edited for many years Chambers’s Journal. It was in the latter periodical that his first story, “A Family Scapegrace,” appeared. A few years later it was followed by “Lost Sir Massingberd,” which raised the circulation of the serial by nearly 20,000 copies. Mr. Payn related some time since to Mr. Joseph Hatton, the journalist, an outline of his daily life which is as follows: “I rise at eight,” said Mr. Payn, “breakfast, read the papers, get to the office at ten, work at my own work until one—subject to any special call on Smith and Elder’s business—lunch at the Reform Club at one—generally with Robinson, of the Daily News, and occasionally with William Black—return to the office at two; from two until four I read manuscripts and edit Cornhill; from 4.0 to 6.30 I play whist at the Reform Club—it is a great rest, whist—home to dinner by seven—I rarely dine out now, and never go to what are called dinner parties—to bed at ten.”

It remains for us to add that his writing is very difficult to decipher, indeed he is sometimes puzzled to read it himself; fortunately for the printers, his daughter makes a copy of his productions by the type-writer.

In answer to a correspondent, Mr. Philip G. Hamerton detailed particulars of his method of work. Said Mr. Hamerton in his interesting letter, “I think that there are two main qualities to be kept in view in literary composition—freshness and finish. The best way, in my opinion, of attaining both is to aim at freshness in the rough draft, with little regard to perfection of expression; the finish can be given by copious subsequent correction, even to the extent of writing all over again when there is time. Whenever possible, I would assimilate literary to pictorial execution by treating the rough draft as a rapid and vigorous sketch, without any regard to delicacy of workmanship; then I would write from this a second work, retaining as much as possible the freshness of the first, but correcting those oversights and errors which are due to rapidity.”

One of his books, he says, was penned as a private diary, then he made a rough and rapid manuscript with a lead pencil, and subsequently rewrote it for the printer, especially with a view to concentration. Mr. Hamerton states that he used shorthand for one volume, which enabled him to write it quickly, but he found much trouble in reading it, and he does not recommend it for literary purposes.

Referring to work, “The Intellectual Life” was begun in quite a different form (not in letters), and many pages were written before he concluded that it was heavy, and that letters would give a lighter and less didactic appearance. We are told that his story “Marmone” was partly written and put aside, and it was not until solicited by Messrs. Roberts Brothers for a book for their “No Name Series,” that he completed it. The earlier part of the novel was written three times over.

In concluding his letter, he says that “I have sometimes, instead of rewriting, sent a corrected rough draft to a type-writer. There is an economy of time in this, and the work can be corrected in the type-writer’s copy; but, on the whole, for very careful finished work, I think the old plan of rewriting the whole manuscript is superior.”

Mr. G. A. Sala used commonly to be regarded as a journalist, but he ranks high as an author. He has written nearly a library of books of travel, essays, and novels, which have been much praised by the critics, and largely circulated. His father was an Italian gentleman, who married a charming and accomplished English lady, famous in her day as a vocalist. Between the ages of six and nine he was totally blind. After regaining his sight he was placed in the Collège Bourbon, Paris, for a couple of years, and subsequently removed to Turnham Green, near London, with a view of thoroughly acquiring his mother tongue which he spoke imperfectly, in fact he was almost ignorant of it. His parents intended him for an artist, but circumstances compelled him to relinquish art in its highest form. Possessing the happy faculty of effective sketching, he produced hundreds of political caricatures and pictorial skits on passing events; these found a ready sale. His eyesight failing, he had to give up lithographing and engraving, and to try other means of making a living. After a variety of engagements, an accident led to his finding his right vocation. One night he was by an oversight locked out of his house, and had to pass the night perambulating the streets. It occurred to him that he might make it a subject of an article, which he accordingly wrote under the title of “The Key of the Street,” and submitted it to Charles Dickens. The famous novelist at once recognised his genius, and encouraged him to become a constant contributor to Household Words. At the suggestion of Dickens he entered the lists of journalism, and won the highest place amongst pressmen. He was known as “The Prince of Journalists.” Sala joined the staff of the Daily Telegraph, and did much to make the reputation of that brilliant journal. He represented it in all parts of the world, and his remuneration equalled the pay of an ambassador. Its columns have been enriched with several thousand leading articles from his facile pen on almost every topic.

Sala was the owner of a large and valuable library, but his chief source of information was found in his common-place book. In it he had brought together facts and illustrations on all kinds of subjects calculated to aid him in his journalistic labours. This wonderful book has often been described, the best account of it appears in “Living London.” “Scarcely a week passes,” says Mr. Sala, “without bringing me letters from correspondents who ask me to explain my own system of keeping a common-place book. I have but one such system, and it possesses one merit, that of rugged simplicity. Take a book, large or small, according to the size of your handwriting, and take care that at the end of the book there shall be plenty of space for an index. Begin at the beginning, and make your entries precisely as they occur to you in unordered sequence. But after each entry place a little circle, or oval, or parenthesis ( ), and in a portion of these spaces place consecutive numbers. Here is a model page taken at random from a book which may have been in keeping for years:—

‘The Prince of Wales wore the robes of the Garter at his marriage in St. George’s Chapel, Windsor. All the other K.Gs present wore their robes and collars. Mr. W. P. Frith, R.A., who was to paint a picture of the wedding for the Queen, stood close to the reredos, to the right, looking from the organ-loft (1023). Just before the liberation in 1859 of Lombardy from the domination of Austria, the audiences in the Italian theatres used to give vent to their pent-up patriotism by shouting at the close of each performance “Viva Verdi!” The initiated knew that this was meant to signify Viva V (for Victor) E (for Emmanuele) R (for Re) D I (for d’Italia) (1024). Old Hungerford Market was never very successful as a fish market; but according to Seyer it was always very well supplied with shrimps. In Hungerford Street, leading to the market, there was a pastrycook’s famous shop, at which the penny buns were as good as those sold at Farrance’s in Cockspur Street (1025).’

“Now, all you have to do is, immediately you have made your entry, to index it; and if you will only spare the time and patience and perseverance, to cross index it. Thus under letter W you will write, ‘Wales, Prince of, married in Robes of the Garter’ (1023); under G, ‘Garter, Robes of, worn by P. of W. at his Marriage’ (1023); under F, ‘W. P. Frith, R.A., present at the Marriage of P. of W.’ (1023). Thus also, ‘Verdi, Victor Emmanuel,’ and ‘Italy’ will be indexed under their respective letters ‘V’ and ‘I,’ and be referable to at the number (1024). I have one common-place book that has been ‘cooking’ ever since 1858, and is not half finished yet. The last entry is numbered (5068), and refers to Sir Thomas Roe, Ambassador from James the First of England to the Emperor Jehan Guize, commonly called the Great Mogul. The number (5068) is referred to under the letters R (for Roe), J (for James I.), J (for Jehan Guize), M (for Mogul), and A (for Ambassadors). By means of a rigidly pursued system of indexing and cross indexing (so earnestly recommended by Henry Brougham) you can put your hand at once on the information bearing on the particular subject which claims your attention.”

Mr. Sala also said:—“I believe this system strengthens and disciplines the memory, and keeps it green. It is a very good mental exercise to read a page or two of the index alone, from time to time. You will be astonished at the number of bright nuggets of fact which will crop up from the rock of half forgetfulness. Finally, never allow your index to fall into arrear, and write the figures in your circumscribed spaces in red ink. The corresponding ones in the index may be in black.”

It was from this mine of literary nuggets that he used to obtain the materials for his charming papers which amused and instructed the reader.

Another celebrated modern journalist and author is Mr. Andrew Lang. He is just the contrary of Mr. Sala in his methods of work. Mr. Lang seems to pride himself on the fact that he has no other aid to writing except an excellent memory. He does not trouble himself about books of reference, and says he has not one of any sort, not even a classical dictionary, in his house. Mr. Lang is certainly a clever writer, and manages to produce much pleasant reading, but his contributions to the magazines and newspapers lack the interesting facts which Mr. Sala placed so pleasantly before the public in his racy and able articles. Mr. Lang devotes his mornings to writing books and magazine articles, and the afternoons to penning leaders for the newspapers.

The Earnings of Authors.

Little is known of the remuneration of authors until the days of Dr. Samuel Johnson. Before his time, literary men, as a rule, depended on the generosity of patrons for their means of support, and as an acknowledgment of their obligations, dedicated their works to them. The dedications were frequently made in most fulsome terms. The position of the writer was certainly a mean one; indeed, it might fitly be pronounced degrading; when he had exhausted his possibilities of patronage, he starved. It was Johnson—a giant in the world of letters—who broke through the objectionable custom, and taught the author to look to the reading public for support, and not to a wealthy patron. It is not until the days of Samuel Johnson that the subject of literary earnings is of much importance; yet we may with advantage glance at a few payments made prior to his age.

We do not know the amount Shakespeare received for his plays, but it is certain that his connection with the theatre in London in a few years realised for him a fortune, and, at a comparatively early age, enabled him to return to his own town, a man of independent means. Oldys, in one of his manuscripts, says that “Hamlet” was sold for £5; but he does not mention his authority for the statement. It appears, from a publication of Robert Greene’s, in 1592, the price of a drama was twenty nobles, or about £6 13s. 4d. of current coin.

Small must have been the literary pay of Spenser, Butler, and Otway, since they feared to die for want of the simple necessaries of life. Milton sold “Paradise Lost” for £5 down, to be followed by £15 if a second and third large editions were required. The first edition consisted of 1,500 copies, and in two years 1,300 were sold. The balance was not disposed of until five years later. This powerful poem, when given to the world, met with some adverse criticism. The poet Waller wrote of it thus: “The old, blind schoolmaster, John Milton, hath published a tedious poem on the fall of man; if its length be not considered a merit, it hath no other.” A greater poet than Waller—Dryden—recognised its merits, and said: “Undoubtedly, ‘Paradise Lost’ is one of the greatest, most noble, and most sublime poems which either this age or nation has produced.” Dryden wrote the following epigram referring to Homer, Virgil, and Milton:—

“Three poets—in three distant ages born—
Greece, Italy, and England did adorn;
The first in loftiness of thought surpassed,
The next in majesty, in both the last.
The force of Nature could no further go;
To make a third, she joined the former two.”

Milton’s poem has been praised by the greatest critics, and it is still very much read. It appears in many forms, and the annual sale is extremely large. Routledge’s popular edition sells at the rate of about a couple of thousand a year; and we suppose the sale of other editions is equally great.

Dryden arranged with Jacob Tonson, the famous bookseller and publisher, to write for him 10,000 verses, at sixpence per line. To make up the required number of lines, he threw in the “Epistle to his Cousin,” and his celebrated “Ode to Music.”

Gray only received £40 for the whole of his poems. He presented the copyright of his famous “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” to Dodsley, feeling that it was beneath the dignity of a gentleman to make money with his pen. The lucky publisher quite agreed with him, and cleared about a thousand pounds by the publication.

Pope’s translation of “Homer” yielded him about £8,000. He was assisted in the work by William Broome, a scholar who was the author of a volume of verse. John Henley thus refers to the circumstance:—

“Pope came off clean with Homer; but they say,
Broome went before, and kindly swept the way.”

Gay made £1,000 by his “Poems.” He was paid £400 for the “Beggar’s Opera,” and for the second part, “Polly,” £1,000. Rich, the theatrical manager, profited to a far greater extent from the “Beggar’s Opera” than its author. The contemporary jest was that it made Gay rich, and Rich gay.

Dr. Johnson sold the copyright of Goldsmith’s “Vicar of Wakefield” for £60, and he thought that amount fairly represented the value of the work. “The great lexicographer,” as Miss Pinkerton called him, placed no high value on the performance of his friend, but the publisher found in the “Vicar of Wakefield” a gold mine. Goldsmith was paid £21 for “The Traveller.” It was the work that established his reputation. Before it appeared he was regarded as little better than a superior Grub Street hack. Johnson pronounced this the finest poem that had been written since the death of Pope. After having read it to the sister of Sir Joshua Reynolds, she said: “Well, I never more shall think Dr. Goldsmith ugly.” The following are the prices Goldsmith obtained for others of his works:—“English Grammar,” £5; the “History of Rome,” in two volumes, 250 guineas; the “History of England,” in four volumes, £500; the “History of Greece,” £250; and the “History of the Earth and Animated Nature,” in eight volumes, £850. “She stoops to Conquer” yielded between £400 and £500. Five shillings a couplet was paid for “The Deserted Village.”

To cover the cost of his mother’s funeral, Johnson wrote “Rasselas,” and disposed of it for £100. He sold his “Lives of the Poets” for 200 guineas. The sum was considered liberal, but Johnson became so engrossed in his subject that he supplied much more than what was expected from him. It is believed that out of his work, in twenty-five years, the booksellers cleared £5,000. It is still a saleable book, and is to be found in every public and private library of any pretentions.

The sum of £700 was paid to Fielding for “Tom Jones,” and for “Amelia,” £1,000.

Very large amounts have been given for biographical works. Hayley received for his “Life of Cowper,” £11,000; and Southey, £1,000 for his life of the same poet. The life of “William Wilberforce” was sold for £4,000; “Bishop Heber’s Journals,” for £5,000; “General Gordon’s Diary,” for £5,250; and the “Life of Hannah More,” for £2,000.

The income of Scott was, perhaps, the largest ever made by authorship, yet he said that the pursuit of literature was a good walking-stick, but a bad crutch! His reputation was first made as a poet, and the following are particulars of his profits from poetry: “The Lay of the Last Minstrel,” published in 1805, £769 6s.; “Ballads and Lyrical Pieces,” published in 1806, £100; for “Marmion,” published 1808, Messrs. Constable offered 1,000 guineas soon after the poem was begun. It proved a very profitable speculation to its publishers. During the first month after its appearance, 2,000 copies were sold, the price being 31s. 6d. the quarto volume. Next came the “Lady of the Lake” (1810), £2,100. This found even greater favour with the public than its predecessors, and with it Scott’s poetical fame reached its zenith. A new poet who appeared on the scene, Byron, completely eclipsed Scott. Scott tried, with two more poems, to win back his lost place, as the popular poet of the period, and produced “Rokeby,” and the “Bridal of Triermain;” the latter was issued anonymously, but both were failures. When Scott saw that his poetry did not attract many readers, he turned his thoughts and energy into another channel, and commenced his immortal novels. He had by him an unfinished story, the work of former years, which he completed, giving it to the world under the title of “Waverley.” Constable offered £700 for the copyright—an amount deemed very large in those days for a novel to be published without the name of the author. Seven hundred sovereigns did not, however, satisfy Scott; he simply said, “It is too much if the work should prove a failure, and too little if it should be a success.” It was a brilliant book, and entranced the reading world. Scott had now found his real vocation. He received for eleven novels, of three volumes each, and nine volumes of “Tales of My Landlord,” the sum of £110,000. For one novel he was paid £10,000. Between November, 1825, and June, 1827, he earned £26,000—an amount representing £52 6s. 3d. per working day. From first to last, Sir Walter Scott made by his literary labours about £300,000.

Lord Byron’s dealings with Mr. Murray were in every respect satisfactory, but this did not prevent the pleasure-loving lord from having a little joke at the expense of his publisher. He delighted Mr. Murray with a gift of a Bible, but the recipient’s pleasure was fleeting, for on examining the book it was discovered that it contained a marginal correction. “Now Barabbas was a robber,” was altered to “Now Barabbas was a publisher.” This was a cruel stab, seeing that Byron had received for his poetry £19,340, and might have increased this sum if he had been more anxious about remuneration.

In Mrs. Oliphant’s book on “William Blackwood and His Sons,” a letter is quoted from Mr. Murray relating to the poet. “Lord Byron is a curious man,” says Murray, “he gave me, as I told you, the copyright of his two poems, to be printed only in his works. I did not receive the last until Tuesday night. I was so delighted with it that even as I read it I sent him a draught for a thousand guineas. The two poems are altogether no more than twelve hundred and fifteen hundred lines, and will altogether sell for five and sixpence. But he returned the draught, saying that it was very liberal—much more than they were worth; that I was perfectly welcome to both poems to print in his (collected) works without cost or expectation, but that he did not think them equal to what they ought to be, and that he would not admit of their separate publication. I went yesterday, and he was rallying me upon my folly in offering so much that he dared to say I thought now I had a most lucky escape. ‘To prove how much I think so, my lord,’ said I ‘do me the favour to accept this pocket book’—In which I had brought with me my draught, changed into two bank notes of £1,000 and £50; but he would not take it. But I am not in despair that he will yet allow their separate publication, which I must continue to urge for mine own honour.”

Mr. Murray treated Crabbe in a most liberal manner. He paid for the “Tales of the Hall,” and the copyright of his other poems, £3,000. It was given to the poet in bills, and we read that “Moore and Rogers earnestly advised him to deposit them, without delay, in some safe hands—but no; he must take them with him to Trowbridge, and show them to his son John. They would hardly believe his good luck at home, if they did not see the bills.” On his way to Trowbridge, a friend at Salisbury, at whose house he rested (Mr. Everett, the banker), seeing that he carried his bills loosely in his waistcoat pocket, requested to be allowed to take charge of them; but Crabbe thankfully declined, saying that “There was no fear of his losing them, and he must show them to his son John.”

Without seeing a line of Thomas Moore’s “Lalla Rookh,” Messrs. Longman undertook to pay £3,000 for it. The terms drawn up were simple, and read as follows: “That upon your giving into our hands a poem of yours, the length of ‘Rokeby,’ you shall receive from us the sum of £3,000. We also agree to the stipulation, that the few songs which you may introduce into the work shall be considered as reserved for your own selling.”

His poem, of some 6,000 lines, was written in a lonely cottage in Derbyshire. Moore never tired of telling his friends that the stormy winter weather in the country helped him to imagine, by contrast, the bright and everlasting summers and glowing scenery of the East.

The work was a great success. The first edition was sold in almost fourteen days; within six months six editions had been called for. It is said that some parts of the poem were translated into Persian, a circumstance which caused Mr. Luttrell to write to the author in the following strain:—

“I’m told dear Moore, your lays are sung
(Can it be true, you lucky man?)
By moonlight, in the Persian tongue,
Along the streets of Ispahan.”

Moore received considerable amounts for his “Irish Melodies.” The mention of these call to mind a letter he penned to Mr. Power, his publisher, on November 12, 1812:—

“My dear Sir,—I have just got your letter, and have only time to say, that if you can let me have three or four pounds by return of post, you will oblige me. I would not have made this importunate demand on you, but I have foolishly let myself run dry without trying my other resources, and I have been the week past literally without one sixpence. Ever, with most sincere good will.—T.M.”

Mr. Power promptly posted ten pounds to the poet. Said Moore, in the course of his reply, “The truth is, we have been kept on a visit at a house where we have been much longer than I wished or intended, and simply from not having a shilling in my pocket to give to the servants on going away. So I know you will forgive my teasing you.... You may laugh at my ridiculous distress in being kept to turtle eating and claret-drinking longer than I wish, and merely because I have not a shilling in my pocket,—but, however paradoxical it sounds, it is true.”

We read in Moore’s journals, ten years later: “17th August, 1822.—Received to-day a letter from Brougham, enclosing one from Barnes (the editor of The Times), proposing that, as he is ill, I shall take his place for some time in writing the leading articles of that paper, the pay to be £100 a month. This is flattering. To be thought capable of wielding so powerful a political machine as The Times newspaper is a tribute the more flattering (as is usually the case) from my feeling conscious that I do not deserve it.” The next day he wrote and declined the offer.

Thomas Campbell received, at the age of 21 years, £60 for his “Pleasures of Hope,” certainly a small amount for a fine poem, yet it gave him a name, and enabled him to obtain large sums for some very slight literary services. The publisher of his “Pleasures of Hope” did not treat him in a generous manner, and his conduct appears to have embittered his mind as will be gathered from the following anecdote. He was present at a party at a period when the actions of Bonaparte were most severely condemned. On being called upon for a toast, Campbell gave “The Health of Napoleon.” This caused a great surprise to all the company, and an explanation was called for. “The only reason I have for proposing to honour Bonaparte,” said he, “is that he had the virtue to shoot a bookseller.” Palm, a bookseller, had recently been executed in Germany by order of the French chief.

It may here be mentioned that the copyright of the “Life of Bonaparte,” by Sir Walter Scott, with some copies of the work, was sold for £18,000.

Successful school-books are often gold mines for the authors and publishers. The copyright of “Vyse’s Spelling-Book” was sold for £2,000 and an annuity of £50 to the compiler.

The copyright of Rundell’s “Domestic Cookery” realised a couple of thousand pounds, and many other works of this class have been extremely popular.

Very large sums have been paid for historical works. Hume received £700 a volume; and Smollett, for a catch-penny rival work, cleared £2,000. The money made by Henry is set down at £3,300. The booksellers, says Mr. Leslie Stephen, made £6,000 out of Robertson’s “History of Scotland.” He was paid for his “Charles V.” the handsome sum of £4,500. Lingard’s “History of England” is, without doubt, an able work, and for it the author was paid £4,683. The author’s profits for the “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,” by Gibbon, are put down at £10,000.

The foregoing are respectable figures, but they appear small when compared with the amounts paid to Lord Macaulay. On one occasion he had handed to him a cheque for £20,000, representing three-fourths of the net profits of his “History of England.” A short time since, the following statement went the rounds of the newspaper press, respecting Mr. Justin McCarthy’s popular work, the “History of Our Own Times.” The book was offered to a well-known publishing firm, who agreed to purchase it for £600. On finding that the author was a Home Ruler, however, this firm asked to be allowed to withdraw from the contract. Mr. McCarthy, who was greatly annoyed at the suggestion that he might mutilate history to suit his own private or political views, then went to Messrs. Chatto and Windus, who at once agreed to publish the work for him on a basis of mutual profits. In the interval, the other firm reconsidered the situation, and asked to be allowed to revive the lapsed contract, but were too late, as the book had been placed in the hands of the second firm. The work won a flattering reception, and the author has, up to the present time, received several thousand pounds as his share of the profits.

In 1897 passed away Dr. Brewer, the compiler of a “Guide to Science,” and other popular books. Shortly before his death, he told an interviewer that he offered the copyright of his “Guide to Science” to Mr. Thomas Jarrold for £50, but he declined the venture, saving he would pay a royalty of one penny in the shilling for every copy sold. It went through two editions in ten months, and then it was agreed to call 8,000 an edition, the royalty to be given half-yearly, but any number less than 1,000 to stand over to the next return. The largest half-yearly royalty was 19,000 copies (Midsummer, 1836). In 1842, Dr. Brewer offered Mr. Jarrold £2,000 for his half-share, which he declined. Soon after this, Messrs. Longman and Co. offered Dr. Brewer £300 per year for life for the copyright. He offered Mr. Jarrold £4,000 for his share, but he replied that he would not accept double that sum, in fact that he would not part with it at all.

According to a careful estimate, Charles Dickens received £10,000 a year from his works for five years, and died worth nearly £100,000. He made every penny from his writings and readings. We need scarcely repeat the well-known facts that “he not only lived in a very liberal style for over thirty years, keeping up a considerable establishment, and often travelling without regard to cost, but he brought up a large and expensive family.”

Thackeray did not make large sums by his books, when we consider his undoubted genius and the high place he holds amongst the greatest authors. It is said that he never made more than £5,000 out of any of his novels. He received large sums for his lectures; indeed, the platform yielded him better returns than the publishers.

Eighty thousand pounds is the amount of Bulwer Lytton’s earnings as a novelist. The remuneration he received, when his books first appeared, did not reach large figures, the sums usually ranging from £600 to £1,000, although his books were in great favour with lovers of fiction. When a collected edition of his novels was issued, the publishers paid liberally for the copyrights. The sale of Lytton’s novels is very large; about 80,000 copies of the sixpenny edition, and some thousands of the three-shillings-and-sixpenny edition, are sold every year.

The Earl of Beaconsfield, it is said, received the largest amount ever paid in this country for a single novel. His last work, “Endymion,” was sold for £12,000. He only produced one other successful story, and that was “Lothair.” It is stated, on good authority, that these two novels have together brought more than double the sums realised for his other books, although inferior to some of his former writings. In his later years the public paid for the novelty of reading stories by a statesman, and not for the merits of his works. Some of his novels have recently been brought out in a shilling edition, but they have already lost the allurements of fiction, and are only read by students of politics, or persons curious as to the character of the author.

Wilkie Collins was paid for “Armadale” £5,000. Mr. James Payn recently received £1,000 for the rights of running one of his novels in the pages of a sixpenny magazine. This author tells rather a good story about the mode of payment for his novels. “It was,” says Mr. Payn, “the custom with a very respectable firm of publishers, with whom I did business, to pay my cheques to the names of my immortal works, instead of to myself: and since it suited their convenience to do so, I never complained of it, though it sometimes put me in rather a false position when I presented my demands in person, as, for example, in the case of the ‘Family Scapegrace.’ When I came for the proceeds of ‘Found Dead,’ it was too much for the sense of professional propriety of the banker’s clerk, who gravely observed: ‘It is very fortunate, Sir, that this cheque is not payable to order, or it would have to be signed by your executors.’” Said Dickens, to whom Payn related the incident, “I should not like to have much money at a bank which keeps so clever a clerk as that.”

Anthony Trollope worked hard to gain a footing in the literary world. His earlier manuscripts were frequently rejected. He tried to induce managers of theatres to accept his plays, but not one was ever produced. The first year’s labour with the pen, and a very hard year’s work too, only yielded £12. The next year the sum was still small, only amounting to £20, yet he did not despair. At last, the happy time came, and it was taken at the flood. It was in 1855 that he scored with “The Warden.” From that time he was a man of mark; his works were in demand, and with ease he earned £1,000 a year, which soon increased to £2,000 and £3,000, and at the time of his death to about £4,000. The amounts paid for a few of his books are as follows: In 1850 was issued “La Vendée,” and for it he got £20; twelve years later he was paid, for “Orley Farm,” £3,135; in 1864 was published “Can You Forgive Her?” for which he received £3,525; and in the same year was issued “The Small House at Allington,” for which he was paid £3,000. Amongst his other novels for which he received large sums may be mentioned “The Last Chronicles of Barset,” £3,000; “Phineas Finn,” £3,200; “He knew He was Right,” £3,200. The last two were published in 1869. He was paid £3,000 for “The Way We Live Now.” “More than nine-tenths of my literary work,” writes Trollope, “has been done in the last twenty years, and during twelve of those years I followed another profession. I have never been a slave to this work, giving due time, if not more than due time, to the amusement I have loved. But I have been constant—and constancy of labour will conquer all difficulties.” In twenty years he made by writing nearly £70,000. We cannot place Trollope in a high position amongst the greatest novelists, yet the monetary results of his literary labours must be regarded as extremely satisfactory.

Large sums of money were made by George Eliot, but we must not forget that she had some weary years to wait for the days of prosperity, and that the story of her life contains many records of disappointment after brave struggles. We read of her living in humble apartments in London; to earn a little money, which she much needed when she went to Switzerland in 1849, she tried to sell her books and globes. It was not until she was forty years of age that she established a reputation by the publication of “Adam Bede.” She received in cash down, for the first sale of her book, some £40,000, or about £2,000 a year. George Eliot had a great objection to her novels appearing in serial form, and she sacrificed much money by not first publishing them in the magazines. Ouida had for a long time the same objection to her stories being published piecemeal in newspapers and periodicals. She now appears to have got over her prejudice in this matter, and consents to write for newspaper readers. It is generally believed amongst literary and journalistic men, that she is not a brilliant success as a newspaper novelist, yet Ouida’s income as an author must be very great. The reader of the weekly paper in which fiction forms a feature is not educated up to her standard; authors like those engaged on the Family Herald and similar journals are much more popular.

It is pleasing to state that Mr. John Ruskin has made large sums with his books, but not so much, we think, as his merits entitle him to receive.

We have seen it stated that by “Oceana,” by no means a large volume, Mr. Froude cleared £10,000.

In the “Life of Longfellow,” written by his brother, are a few particulars of his earnings. During 1825—the last year of his college course—he contributed poems to the United States Literary Gazette, and was paid one or two dollars a poem, the price depending on the length of the piece. He wrote, in 1840-1, “The Village Blacksmith,” “Endymion,” and “God’s Acre,” and was paid fifteen dollars each. When his fame was fully established, Mr. Bonner the publisher of the New York Ledger, paid him, for the right of publishing in that paper, 3,000 dollars for “The Hanging of the Crane.”

Lord Tennyson received considerable sums for his poetry. He was paid £100 for the right of printing a short original poem in a monthly magazine. For his ballad, “The Revenge,” in the Nineteenth Century, he received 300 guineas. It became known some time ago that his lordship did not deem £5,000 a year a sufficient sum for the exclusive right of publishing his works. He changed his publishers several times. He was regarded as a keen man of business, and it is said that he generally got the best of the bargain.

Money never tempted Robert Browning to contribute to the magazines. His poems always saw the light in book form.

Mr. J. Cuthbert Hadden, who has made a study of this subject, says the supply of verse to-day is greatly in excess of the demand, and so it happens that in many quarters poetry is not paid for at all. Most of the minor poets whose volumes come before the public have to bear the whole expense of production themselves, and only a very small number escape without considerable loss. In this connection an amusing story regarding James Russell Lowell—not quite a minor poet—may be quoted. The cost of publishing his first book was borne entirely by Mr. Lowell himself, the edition being a plain but substantial one of 500 copies. The author felt the usual pride in his achievement, and hoped for almost immediate fame. Unhappily, only a few copies of the work were sold. Soon after, a fire occurred in the publishing house where the volumes were stored, and they were destroyed. As the publisher carried a full insurance on the stock, Mr. Lowell was able to realise the full cash value on his venture, and he had the satisfaction of saying that the entire edition was exhausted.

The leading American novelists usually get £1,000 for a serial story in a magazine, and a similar sum when it is produced in book form. Bret Harte can command a thousand dollars for a single magazine article. Mrs. Grant received a cheque for £40,000 for her share of the first volume of General Grant’s “Memoirs,” and the whole of her share of the proceeds is put down at £100,000.

In closing, we must remind our readers that there are two sides to every picture, and that countless instances of bitter disappointment and death are recorded in the annals of literature. Only a few in the mighty army of writers come to the front and win fame and fortune.

“Declined with Thanks.”

“Declined with thanks,” is a phrase which often disappoints the aspirant in the wide field of literature. Works of the highest merit are frequently rejected by publishers; indeed, some of the most popular books in our language have gone the rounds of the trade without their merits being recognised. Frequently the authors, after repeated failures, have brought their works out at their own risk, and have thereby won fame and fortune. In works of fiction, perhaps the most notable example of a story which was offered to publisher after publisher only to be returned to its author, is that of “Robinson Crusoe.” It was at last “Printed for W. Taylor, at the Ship in Paternoster Row, MDCCXIX.” It proved a good speculation for the lucky publisher. He made a profit of one hundred thousand pounds out of the venture. Jane Austen’s name stands high in the annals of English literature; yet she had a struggle to get her books published. She sold her “Northanger Abbey” to a Bath bookseller for the insignificant sum of ten pounds. The manuscript remained for some time in his possession without being printed, he fearing that if published it would prove a failure. He was, however, at length induced to issue it, and its merits caused it to be extensively read. Samuel Warren could not prevail upon a publisher to bring out his well-known book, “The Diary of a late Physician,” and, much against his inclination, it was first given to the reading public as a serial in “Blackwood’s Magazine.” Thackeray wrote his great novel, “Vanity Fair,” for “Colburn’s Magazine”; it was refused by the publishers, who deemed it a work without interest. He tried to place it with several of the leading London firms who all declined it. He finally issued it in monthly parts, and by it his fame as a novelist was established.

It will surprise many to learn that the first volume of Hans Christian Andersen’s “Fairy Tales” was declined by every publisher in Copenhagen. The book was brought out at the author’s own cost, and the charming collection of stories gained for him world-wide renown. The Rev. James Beresford could not induce any publisher to pay twenty pounds for his amusing volume, entitled “The Miseries of Human Life.” It was after some delay issued, and in twelve months passed through nine editions. A humorous notice by Sir Walter Scott in the “Edinburgh Review” doubtless did much to increase the circulation of the book. The handsome sum of five thousand pounds profit was cleared out of this happy venture. In an able work by a leading American critic, entitled “American Publishers and English Authors,” it is stated that “‘Jane Eyre’ went the round of the publishing houses of London, but could not find a market until the daughter of a publisher accidentally discovered the manuscript in an iron safe, where it had been lying until it was mouldy. She saw the extraordinary merit of the novel, and induced her father to publish it.” The foregoing statement is incorrect. As a matter of fact, the manuscript was sent by rail to Messrs. Smith, Elder & Co., on the 24th August, 1847, and by the 16th of October in the same year the firm issued the novel. According to Mrs. Gaskell’s “Life of Charlotte Brontë,” the future publishers of “Jane Eyre” were at once most favourably impressed with the book, and this is fully confirmed by the prompt publication of it. Respecting its reception by the firm, says Mrs. Gaskell, “the first reader of the manuscript was so powerfully struck by the character of the tale, that he reported his impression in very strong terms to Mr. Smith, who appears to have been much amused by the admiration excited. ‘You seem to have been so much enchanted, that I do not know how to believe you,’ he laughingly said. But when a second reader, in the person of a clear-headed Scotchman, not given to enthusiasm, had taken the manuscript home in the evening, and become so deeply interested in it as to sit up half the night to finish it, Mr. Smith’s curiosity was sufficiently excited to prompt him to read it for himself; and great as were the praises which had been bestowed upon it, he found that they did not exceed the truth.” The first novel Miss Brontë wrote was entitled “The Professor,” which was submitted to numerous publishers without finding one to accept it. It was not issued until after the death of the gifted author, and is much inferior to her other books. Says Mrs. Gaskell, “Mr. Smith has told me a little circumstance connected with the reception of this manuscript, which seems indicative of no ordinary character. It came in a brown paper parcel to 65, Cornhill. Besides the address to Messrs. Smith, Elder & Co., there were on it those of other publishers to whom the tale had been sent, not obliterated, but simply scored through, so that Mr. Smith at once perceived the names of some of the houses in the trade to which the unlucky parcel had gone, without success.”

Sterne could not find a bookseller who would pay fifty pounds for “Tristram Shandy,” he therefore issued it on his own account, and it proved a saleable work, gaining for its author a front place amongst English humorists. Mrs. Stowe’s “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” was written as a serial for the “National Era,” an anti-slavery journal published at Washington. It was next offered to Messrs. Jewett & Co., but their reader and critic pronounced it not a story of sufficient interest to be worth reproducing in book form. The wife of the latter strenuously insisted that it would meet with a favourable reception, and advised its publication. In a notice of Mrs. Stowe, it is stated that in four years 313,000 copies had been printed in the United States alone, probably as many more in Great Britain. Miss Warner’s popular novel, “The Wide, Wide World,” was declined by a leading New York publisher. It is said that several well-known houses refused to have anything to do with one of the most popular books of recent times, “Vice Versâ”; even when in type, two American firms did not discover its worth, and rejected it.

Some notable books in history, travels, poetry, and science have been “Declined with thanks.” Both Murray and Longman were afraid to risk the publication of Prescott’s “Ferdinand and Isabella,” but Bentley brought out the book, and according to his statement it is the most successful work that he has published. A score of houses refused to publish “Eöthen.” The author in despair handed his manuscript to one of the lesser known booksellers, and printed it at his own cost; it was extremely successful. After twenty-five editions of Buchan’s “Domestic Medicine” had been sold, one thousand six hundred pounds was paid for the copyright, yet, strange to state, before it was published not a single firm in Edinburgh would pay a hundred pounds for it. Strahan, the King’s printer, had offered to him the first volume of Blair’s “Sermons,” and, after a careful perusal, concluded that the work would not be one to find a ready sale. Dr. Johnson, however, came to the rescue, and with his eloquence induced Mr. Strahan to pay a hundred pounds for the copyright. It had a large circulation; for a second volume, three hundred pounds was the amount gladly paid, and for subsequent volumes six hundred pounds each.

Sir Richard Phillips rejected several famous books. It was to this bookseller and publisher that Robert Bloomfield offered the copyright of his “Farmer’s Boy” in return for a dozen copies of the work when printed. He feared it would be a failure, and declined it. The poet issued it by subscription, and within three years 25,000 copies were sold. This publisher is said to have had offered to him Byron’s early poems. He might have purchased the copyright of “Waverley” for thirty pounds, but declined it! He rejected other works which won favourable reception from the press and the public. It is only right to state that he gave to the world many valuable volumes, and that he was a man of decided literary ability. A paragraph went the rounds of the literary press after the death of Mr. J. H. Parker, the well-known Oxford publisher, stating that the copyright of Keble’s “Christian Year” was offered to Joseph Parker for the sum of twenty pounds and refused. It was further stated that “during the forty years which followed the publication of this work nearly 400,000 copies were sold, and Mr. Keble’s share of the profits amounted to fourteen thousand pounds, being one-fourth the retail price.” The brothers Smith desired to sell for twenty pounds to Mr. Murray their celebrated “Rejected Addresses,” but the great publisher declined the proposal with thanks. They resolved to bring out the book at their own risk. It hit the popular taste, and after sixteen editions had been sold, Mr. Murray paid for the copyright one hundred and thirty-one pounds. The poems yielded the authors over a thousand pounds.

Editors of newspapers and magazines have often made ludicrous blunders in rejecting poems of sterling merit. It is generally known that the editor of the Greenock Advertiser expressed his regret that he could not insert in his newspaper one of Thomas Campbell’s best poems on account of it not being quite up to his standard.

The Rev. Charles Wolfe submitted to the editor of a leading magazine his famous ode on “The Burial of Sir John Moore,” but it was rejected in such a scornful manner as to cause the writer to hand it to the editor of The Newry Telegraph, an Ulster newspaper of no standing as a literary journal. It was published in 1817, in that obscure paper, with the initials of “C. W.” It was reproduced in various publications, and attracted great attention. It is one of the best in our limited number of pieces of martial poetry.

Epigrams on Authors.

The epigram is of considerable antiquity. The Greeks placed on their monuments, statues, and tombs, short poetical inscriptions, written in a simple style, and it was from this practice that we derive the epigram. In the earlier examples we fail to find any traces of satire which is now its chief characteristic. The Romans were the first to give a satirical turn to this class of literature. Amongst the writers of Latin epigrams, Catullus and Martial occupy leading places. The French are, perhaps, the most gifted writers of epigrams. German epigrammatists have put into verse moral proverbs. Schiller and Goethe did not, however, follow the usual practice of their countrymen, but wrote many satirical epigrams, having great force. Many of our English poets have displayed a fine faculty of writing epigrams.

The birthplace of Homer is a disputed point, and has given rise to not a few essays and epigrams. Thomas Heywood, in one of his poetical publications, published in 1640, wrote:—

“Seven cities warr’d for Homer, being dead,
Who, living, had no roof to shroud his head.”

Much in the same strain wrote Thomas Seward, a century and a half later:—

“Seven wealthy towns contend for Homer dead,
Through which the living Homer begg’d his bread.”

The two writers have not stated fully the number of cities which claim to have given birth to Homer. The number is nearer twenty than seven. Pope, in his translation of Homer, was assisted by a poet named William Broome, a circumstance which prompted John Henley to pen the following:—

“Pope came off clean with Homer; but, they say,
Broome went before, and kindly swept the way.”

Butler, the author of “Hudibras,” was much neglected during his life. It is true that Charles II. and his courtiers read and were delighted with his poem, but they did not extend to him any patronage. The greater part of his days were passed in obscurity and poverty. He had been buried about forty years when a monument was placed in Westminster Abbey to his memory, by John Barber, a printer, and afterwards an Alderman and Lord Mayor of London. Samuel Wesley wrote on the memorial the following lines:—

“Whilst Butler, needy wretch! was yet alive,
No gen’rous patron would a dinner give;
See him, when starved to death, and turn’d to dust,
Presented with a monumental bust!
The poet’s fate is here in emblem shown,—
He asked for bread, and he receiv’d a stone.”

An epitaph similar in sentiment to the foregoing was placed by Horace Walpole over the remains of Theodore, King of Corsica, who, after many trials and disappointments, ended his life as a prisoner for debt in King’s Bench, and was buried in the churchyard of St. Anne’s, Westminster:—

“The grave, great teacher, to a level brings
Heroes and beggars, galley slaves and kings.
But Theodore this moral learn’d ere dead;
Fate pour’d its lesson on his living head;
Bestow’d a kingdom, and denied him bread.”

The fourth Earl of Chesterfield, on seeing a whole-length portrait of Nash between the busts of Sir Isaac Newton and Pope in the rooms at Bath, wrote as follows:—

“Immortal Newton never spoke
More truth than here you’ll find;
Nor Pope himself e’er penn’d a joke
More cruel on mankind.
The picture, plac’d the busts between,
Gives satire all its strength:
Wisdom and Wit are little seen,
But Folly at full length.”

Stephen Duck’s poetry and progress in life gave rise to some lively lines by the lampooners of the eighteenth century. He was an agricultural labourer, having a thirst for knowledge and some skill as a writer of verse. This humble and self-taught student was brought under the notice of Queen Caroline, who was much interested in his welfare, and pleased with his poetry; she granted him a pension of £30 a year. He was next made a yeoman of the guard, an appointment he did not long retain, for he was advanced to the position of a clergyman in the Church of England, and presented to the living of Byfleet, Surrey. It is to be feared that his education was not sufficiently liberal for a clerk in holy orders. Dean Swift assailed the poor poet as follows:—

“The thresher Duck could o’er the Queen prevail;
The proverb says ‘No fence against a flail.’
From threshing corn he turns to thresh his brains,
For which Her Majesty allows him grains.
Though ’tis confess’d that those who ever saw
His poems, think them all not worth a straw.
Thrice happy Duck, employed in threshing stubble!
Thy toil is lessen’d and thy profits doubled.”

The want of dignity displayed in the foregoing is unworthy of Swift, and the reply as follows made by Duck is certainly much to his credit:—

“You think it, censor, mighty strange
That, born a country clown,
I should my first profession change
And wear a chaplain’s gown!
If virtue honours the low race
From which I was descended,
If vices your high birth disgrace
Who should be most commended?”

Duck wrote the epitaph for the tombstone over the remains of Joe Miller of mirthful memory. The following is a copy of the lines:—

“If humour, wit, and honesty could save
The hum’rous, witty, honest from the grave;
The grave had not so soon this tenant found
Whom honesty, and wit, and humour crowned.
Or could esteem and love preserve our breath,
And guard us longer from the stroke of death,
The stroke of death on him had later fell,
Whom all mankind esteem’d and lov’d so well.”

The poet-preacher was advanced to the chaplaincy of a regiment of Dragoon Guards. Sad to relate, in the year 1756, in a fit of insanity, he took his own life.

During the Gordon riots on the 7th of January, 1780, Lord Mansfield’s house in Bloomsbury Square was burnt, and in the flames perished his valuable library, which he commenced collecting when a lad at school. It included many valuable volumes and materials for memoirs of his times. Cowper thus wrote on the subject:—

“So then—the Vandals of our isle,
Sworn foes of sense and law,
Have burnt to dust a nobler pile
Than ever Roman saw!
And Murray sighs o’er Pope and Swift,
And many a treasure more,
The well-judged purchase, and the gift
That graced his letter’d store.
Their pages mangled, burnt, and torn,
The loss was his alone;
But ages yet to come shall mourn
The burning of his own.”

A pleasing and playful epigram on Robert Bloomfield, the author of “The Farmer’s Boy,” was written by Henry Kirke White:—

“Bloomfield, thy happy omen’d name
Ensures continuance of thy fame;
Both sense and truth this verdict give,
While fields shall bloom thy name shall live.”

The residences of Wordsworth, Southey, and Coleridge near the English Lakes suggested the title of lake poets, and of their works the Rev. Henry Townshend wrote:—

“They come from the lakes—an appropriate quarter
For poems diluted with plenty of water.”

Surely Lord Holland was a little wide of the mark when he penned the following epigram, complaining that Southey did not write sufficient laureate poems; the fact is, he wrote too many to sustain his reputation as a poet:—

“Our Laureate Bob defrauds the King—
He takes his cash and will not sing;
Yet on he goes, I know not why,
Singing for us who do not buy.”

In the Diary of Thomas Moore, under date of September 4, 1825, it is stated: “Lord H. full of an epigram he had just written on Southey, which we all twisted and turned into various shapes; he is as happy as a boy during the operation. He suggests the following as the last couplet:—

“And for us, who will not buy,
Goes singing on eternally.”

It has been truthfully observed that William Wordsworth “found poetry in the most common-place events of life, and described them in familiar language; he naturally contended that there was little real difference between poetry and prose.” Byron thus rallies him on the theory:—

“The simple Wordsworth, framer of a lay
As soft as evening in his favourite May,
Who warns his friend, ‘to shake off toil and trouble,
And quit his books, for fear of growing double;’
Who, both by precept and example, shows
That prose is verse, and verse is merely prose;
Convincing all, by demonstration plain,
Poetic souls delight in prose inane.”

Theodore Hook produced some pungent verses; here is a slight example on Shelley’s “Prometheus Unbound”:—

“Shelley styles his new poem Prometheus Unbound,
And ’tis like to remain so while time circles round;
For surely an age would be spent in the finding
A reader so weak as to pay for the binding!”

Scott wrote a poem which was published in 1815, under the title of The Field of Waterloo, and prefaced it thus: “It may be some apology for the imperfections of this poem, that it was composed hastily, and during a short tour upon the Continent, where the author’s labours were liable to frequent interruption; but its best apology is, that it was written for the purpose of assisting the Waterloo subscription.”

This plea did not disarm hostile criticism. Thomas, Lord Erskine, expressed himself as follows:—

“On Waterloo’s ensanguined plain
Lie tens of thousands of the slain;
But none by sabre or by shot
Fell half so flat as Walter Scott.”

Wrote Thomas Moore in his Diary: “I have read Walter-loo. The battle murdered many, and he has murdered the battle; ’tis sad stuff.”

The Earl of Carlisle wrote a sixpenny pamphlet advocating small theatres; and on the day it was issued the newspapers contained the announcement that he had given a large subscription to a public fund, a circumstance which formed the theme of the following epigram by his cousin, Lord Byron:

“Carlisle subscribes a thousand pounds
Out of his rich domains;
And for sixpence circles round
The product of his brains:
’Tis thus the difference you may hit
Between his fortune and his wit.”

Byron made his unhappy marriage the subject of at least three epigrams. Here are two of them as follows:—

On His Wedding-day.

“Here’s a happy new year! But with reason
I beg you’ll permit me to say—
Wish me many returns of the season,
But as few as you please of the day.”

At a later period he wrote—

“This day, of all our days, has done
The worst for me and you:
’Tis just six years since we were one,
And five since we were two.”

Lord Byron’s friend, Thomas Moore, wrote many excellent epigrams, and not a few were penned about him. He published his first volume of poems under the name of Thomas Little. It is stated that a lady found a copy of the book under the pillow of her maid’s bed, and wrote on it in pencil:—

“You read Little, I guess;
I wish you’d read less.”

The servant was equal to her mistress, and wrote:—

“I read Little before,
Now I mean to read Moore.”

Lord Byron wrote the following in 1811 on Moore’s farcical opera:—

“Good plays are scarce;
So Moore writes farce;
The poet’s fame grows brittle—
We knew before
That Little’s Moore,
But now ’tis Moore that’s Little.”

Respecting Moore’s duel with Lord Jeffrey, Theodore Hook composed the following lines:—

“When Anacreon would fight, as the poets have said,
A reverse he displayed in his vapour,
For while all his poems were loaded with lead,
His pistols were loaded with paper.

For excuses, Anacreon old custom may thank,
Such salvo he should not abuse;
For the cartridge, by rule, is always made blank
That is fired away at Reviews.”

“Moore is here called Anacreon,” says W. Davenport Adams, “in allusion to his translations from that poet.” The duel was owing to an article in the Edinburgh Review, which Moore thought proper to resent by challenging the editor. The combatants were, however, arrested on the ground, and conveyed to Bow Street, where the pistols were found to contain merely a charge of powder, the balls having in some way disappeared. Byron alludes to the circumstance in English Bards and Scotch Reviewers:—

“When Little’s leadless pistol met his eye,
And Bow Street myrmidons stood laughing by.”

After this strange encounter, the poet and critic were firm friends.

Slips of the pen have given rise to some smart epigrammatic corrections. Albert Smith wrote in an album as follows:—

“Mont Blanc is the Monarch of Mountains,
They crown’d him long ago;
But who they got to put it on
Nobody seems to know.”
Albert Smith.

Thackeray was successfully solicited to contribute to the same book, and wrote under the fore-going:—

A Humble Suggestion.

“I know that Albert wrote in a hurry,
To criticize I scarce presume;
But methinks that Lindley Murray,
Instead of who had written whom.”
W. M. Thackeray.

Samuel Warren on one occasion made a slip in writing in an album, misquoting Moore, writing “glory’s throb” instead of “glory’s thrill.” The mistake formed the subject of the following impromptu lines by Mr. Digby Seymour:—

“Warren, thy memory was poor
The Irish bard to rob,
Had you remembered Tommy Moore,
Glory would ‘thrill,’ not ‘throb.’”

The vanity of Mr. Warren was unusually largely developed, and gave rise to a number of amusing anecdotes. Sir George Rose thus refers to his weakness:—

“Samuel Warren, though able, yet vainest of men,
Could he guide with discretion his tongue and his pen,
His course would be clear for—‘Ten Thousand a Year;’
But limited else be a brief—‘Now and Then.’”

For a long period Mr. Warren was the Recorder for Hull. Mr. Thompson, the Town Clerk, was a gentleman of cultivated literary tastes, and able to compose a neat epigram. He wrote the following:—

“Our Recorder, Sam Warren, from all that I hear,
Is one of the kindest of men,
For a friend he presents with ‘Ten Thousand a Year,’
And adds to the gift ‘Now and Then.’”

Mr. William Harrison Ainsworth, the romance writer, was very unpopular with the contributors of Punch, and many were the satires on him in its pages. Colburn published a magazine, in which many of Ainsworth’s novels appeared, and this gave rise to the following epigram:—

“Says Ainsworth to Colburn:
‘A plan in my pate is
To give my romance as
A supplement gratis.’
“Says Colburn to Ainsworth:
‘’Twill do very nicely,
For that will be charging
Its value precisely.’”

In early manhood, Edwin Paxton Hood called upon Bulwer Lytton without any introduction. The servant told him that his master could not be seen. On receiving the intimation, Hood took out of his pocket pencil and paper, and wrote as follows:—

“A son of song, to fame unknown,
Stands waiting in your hall below;
Your footman tells him to begone;
Say, mighty Bulwer, shall he go?”

It is not surprising to learn that the impromptu lines proved an effective introduction. The interview was the first of many pleasant meetings between the author of The Caxtons and Mr. Paxton Hood.

Poetical Graces.

Literary by-paths furnish some singular specimens of poetical graces. We produce a few for the entertainment of our readers.

Robert Fergusson, the Edinburgh poet, was born in 1751, and was a student at St. Andrews’ University from his thirteenth to his seventeenth year. It was the duty of each student, in turn, to ask a blessing at the dinner table. One day, to the consternation of all, the youthful bard repeated the following lines:

“For rabbits young, and for rabbits old,
For rabbits hot, and for rabbits cold,
For rabbits tender, and for rabbits tough,
Our thanks we render, for we’ve had enough.”

The masters of the college deliberated how they should punish the graceless poet. It was finally resolved not to censure him, but to have in the future a more spare supply of rabbits. Poor Fergusson’s sad career closed in a lunatic asylum at an early age, not, however, before he had enriched Scottish poetical literature with some important contributions.

Burns appears to have had a great admiration for this wayward son of song. He placed over his remains in the Canongate Churchyard, Edinburgh, a tombstone bearing the following inscription:—

“Here lies Robert Fergusson,
Poet, born September 5th, 1751,
Died October 16th, 1774.
No sculptured marble here, nor pompous lay
No storied urn, nor animated bust;
This simple stone directs pale Scotia’s way
To pour her sorrows o’er her Poet’s dust.”

On the back of the stone it is stated:—

“By special grant of the Managers to Robert Burns, who erected this stone, this burial place is ever to remain sacred to the memory of Robert Fergusson.”

More than one poetical grace is attributed to the facile pen of Burns. His grace before dinner is well known, and is as follows:—

“Oh Thou who kindly dost provide
For every creature’s want!
We bless Thee, God of nature wide,
For all Thy goodness lent:
And if it please Thee, Heavenly guide,
May never worse be sent,
But whether granted or denied,
Lord, bless us with content.”

It is said that at one of Burns’s convivial dinners he was desired to say grace, and he gave the following, impromptu:

“O Lord we do Thee humbly thank
For what we little merit;—
Now Jean may tak’ the flesh away,
And Will bring on the spirit.”

On one occasion a rhymster, who had placed before him a supper small in quantity and poor in quality, invoked a blessing with the following lines:—

“O Thou who bless’d the loaves and fishes
Look down upon these two poor dishes;
And though the ’tatoes be but small,
Lord make them large enough for all;
For if they do our bellies fill,
’Twill be a wondrous miracle.”

This reminds us of an epigram entitled “Dress v. Dinner:”—

What is the reason, can you guess,
Why men are poor, and women thinner?
So much do they for dinner dress,
There’s nothing left to dress for dinner.

On a graceless peer an epigrammatist wrote:—

“‘By proxy I pray, and by proxy I vote,’
A graceless peer said to a churchman of note;
Who answered,‘My lord, then I venture to say,
You’ll to heaven ascend in a similar way.’”

Here is a grateful grace:—

“Some hae meat that canna eat,
An’ some cou’d eat that want it;
But we hae meat, an’ we can eat,
Sae let the Lord be thankit.”

The Rev. Samuel Wesley, formerly vicar of Epworth, and another friend were entertained to dinner at Temple Belwood, by a host noted as a strange compound of avarice and oddity. Mr. Wesley returned thanks with the following impromptu lines:—

“Thanks for the feast, for ’tis no less
Than eating manna in the wilderness,
Here meagre famine bears controlless sway,
And ever drives each fainting wretch away.
Yet here, O how beyond a saint’s belief,
We’ve seen the glories of a chine of beef;
Here chimneys smoke, which never smoked before,
And we have dined, where we shall dine no more.”

In conclusion we give a vegetarian grace. The first four lines are to be said before the meal:—

“These fruits do Thou, O Father, bless,
Which Mother Earth to us doth give;
No blood doth stain our feast to day,
In Thee we trust, and peaceful live.”

The next is a form of thanksgiving after a vegetarian meal:—

“We thank Thee, Lord, for these Thy fruits,
Which Mother Earth to us doth give;
No blood hath stained our feast to-day,
In Thee we trust, and peaceful live!”

Poetry on Panes.

In a variety of places, but more especially in old village inns, reflections in verse, good, bad, and indifferent, have been found scratched upon window-panes. We have carefully copied the best examples which have come under our notice, and present a batch herewith, believing that they may entertain our readers.

A genial old Yorkshire parson appears at the commencement of the present century to have been greatly pleased with an inn situated between Northallerton and Boroughbridge, for he visited it daily to enjoy his pipe and glass. On one of its window-panes he inscribed some lines, of which the following is a literal copy:—

“Here in my wicker chair I sitt,
From folly far, and far from witt,
Content to live, devoid of care,
With country folks and country fare;
To listen to my landlord’s tale,
And drink his health in Yorkshire ale;
Then smoak and read the York Courant;
I’m happy and ’tis all I want.
Though few my tythes, and light my purse,
I thank my God it is no worse.”

Here is another Yorkshire example, written towards the close of the last century; it is from an old wayside inn near Harewood-bridge, on the Leeds and Harrogate road:—

“Gaily I lived, as Ease and Nature taught,
And passed my little Life without a thought;
I wonder, then, why Death, that tyrant grim,
Should think of me, who never thought of him.”

Under the foregoing, the following was written:

“Ah! why forget that Death should think of thee;
If thou art Mortal, such must surely be;
Then rouse up reason, view thy hast’ning end,
And lose no time to make God thy Friend.”

In the old coaching days, the Dog and Doublet, at Sandon, Staffordshire, was a popular house. A guest wrote on one of its window panes the following recommendation:—

“Most travellers to whom these roads are known,
Would rather stay at Sandon than at Stone!
Good chaises, horses, treatment, and good wines,
They always meet with at James Ballantine’s.”

A penniless poet wrote on a tavern window-pane the lines:—

“O Chalk! to me, and to the poor, a friend,
On Thee my life and happiness depend;
On Thee with joy, with gratitude I think,
For, by thy bounty, I both eat and drink.”

“Chalk” is a slang word for credit. Innkeepers kept their accounts on the back of a door, written with chalk.

The following epigram was written under a pane disfigured with autographs:—

“Should you ever chance to see,
A man’s name writ on a glass,
Be sure he owns a diamond,
And his parent owns an ass.”

On the accession of Her Majesty, this jeu d’esprit was inscribed on an inn window:—

“The Queen’s with us, the Whigs exulting say;
For when she found us in, she let us stay.
It may be so; but give me leave to doubt
How long she’ll keep you when she finds you out.”

The following lines dated 1793, were written on a window-pane at the Hotel des Pays Bas, Spa Belgium:—

“I love but one, and only one,
Ah, Damon, thou art he!
Love thou but one, and only one,
And let that one be me!”

Early in the present century, it was customary for the actors to write their names on the panes in one of the windows of the York Theatre. On the glass of the same window were found inscribed these lines.

“The rich man’s name embellished stands on brass;
The player simply scribbles his on glass,
Appropriate tablet to the wayward fate—
A brittle shining, evanescent state:
The fragile glass destroyed—farewell the name;
The actor’s glass consumed—farewell his fame.”

Our next example, dated 1834, from Purwell Hall, Batley, Yorkshire, was composed by a Miss Taylor. It is generally believed that her heart was won by a lover who did not meet with the approbation of her friends, and that they made her prisoner in one of the rooms of the old Hall, and there, on a pane of glass, were written the lines which follow:—

“Come, gentle Muse, wont to divert
Corroding cares from anxious heart;
Adjust me now to bear the smart
Of a relenting angry heart.
What though no being I have on earth,
Though near the place that gave me birth,
And kindred less regard do pay
Than thy acquaintance of to-day:
Know what the best of men declare,
That they on earth but strangers are,
Nor matter it a few years hence
How fortune did to thee dispense,
If—in a palace thou hast dwelt,
Or—in a cell of penury felt—
Ruled as a prince—served as a slave,
Six feet of earth is all thou’lt have.
Hence give my thoughts a nobler theme,
Since all the world is but a dream
Of short endurance.”

Robert Burns wrote several lines on tavern windows. On a pane of glass at the Queensberry Arms, Sanquhar, he inscribed the following.

“Ye gods! ye gave to me a wife
Out of your grace and favour,
To be a comfort to my life;
And I was glad to have her.
But if your providence divine
For other ends design her,
To obey your will at any time,
I’m ready to resign her.”

Next may be quoted:—

“Envy, if thy jaundiced eye
Through this window chance to pry,
To thy sorrow, thou wilt find
All that’s generous, all that’s kind:
Virtue, friendship, every grace
Dwelling in this happy place.”

Burns’s lines written on the window-panes of the Globe Tavern, Dumfries, have frequently been quoted. The following inscription refers to the charms of the daughter of the factor of Closeburn estate, when the poet resided at Ellisland:—

“O lovely Polly Stewart,
O charming Polly Stewart,
There’s not a flower that blooms in May,
That’s half so fair as thou art.”

In some editions of the poet’s works, the following verse, stated to have been copied from a window of the same tavern, is given:—

“The graybeard, Old Wisdom, may boast of his treasures;
Grant me with gay Folly to live;
I grant him his calm-blooded, time settled pleasures;
But Folly has raptures to give.”

Such are a few of the many rhymes scratched upon glass. Some of the panes on which they were inscribed may now be broken, and this may be the only means of preserving them.

English Folk-Rhymes.

English folk-rhymes are very numerous and curious. Characteristics of persons and places have given rise to not a few which are frequently far from complimentary. Weather-lore is often expressed in rhyme; the rustic muse has besides rendered historic events popular, and enabled persons to remember them who are not readers of books. The lines often lack polish, but are seldom without point.

Amongst the more ancient rhymes are those respecting grants of land. The following is a good example, and is from Derbyshire:—

“Me and mine
Give thee and thine
Millners Hay
And Shining Cliff,
While grass is green
And hollies rough.”

The old story of the grant is thus related. Years ago, a member of the ancient family of Lowe had the honour of hunting with the king and his nobles. Lowe rode a splendid horse, the only one in at the death. The king admired the animal very much, and the owner presented it to His Majesty. The horse “mightily pleased the king.” Some little time afterwards, Lowe waited upon the king to beg a brier bed and a watering-place, which were Shining Cliff and Millners Hay. The request was at once complied with. The tale does not end here. It is related that “an envious courtier told the king that he did not know what he was doing, for what he was giving away was a great wood with a large tract of land.” Upon this, Lowe said to His Majesty: “King or no king?”—“Why, king, Lowe.” Adding with prompitude: “The brier-bed and watering-place are thine:” the rhyme above quoted being given as the title for the grant.

It is asserted that Athelstan granted the first charter to the ancient borough of Hedon, Yorkshire, in these words:—

“As free make I thee
As eye see or ear hear.”

It is said a similar charter was granted by the same king to the neighbouring town of Beverley.

An old, old Norfolk rhyme says:—

“Rising was a seaport town,
And Lynn it was a wash;
But now Lynn is a seaport town,
And Rising fares the worst.”

It is said at Norwich:—

“Caistor was a city ere Norwich was none,
And Norwich was built of Caistor stone.”

“About half-way between Curbar and Brompton, to the right of the turnpike leading from Barlow to Sheffield,” writes William Wood, “there is, far on the moor, a very level flat piece of ground, near a mile square, most remarkable for its boggy nature, so much so that it is dangerous to cross, or at times to approach. Here, before the Roman invasion, says the legend, stood a town or village, the inhabitants of which lived, according to Diodorus Siculus, in small cots or huts built of wood, the walls of stakes or wattles, like hurdles, and covered with rushes or reeds. These dwellings, with their inhabitants, were swallowed up by one of those convulsions of nature so destructive at times to the habitations of mankind.” Respecting Leechfield and Chesterfield are the following lines current in Derbyshire:—