An Authors Mind | Page 9

some master-mind; it greets the public with a captivating
air, and straightway becomes the rage; it seems epidemical; it comes
out simultaneously as a piece of political economy, a cookery-book, a
tragedy, a farce, a novel, a religious experience, an abstract ism, or a
concrete ology; till the poor worn-out, dissipated shadow of a thought
looks so feeble, thin, fashionably affected and fashionably infected, that
its honest, bluff old father, for very shame, disowns it. Thus has it come
to pass, that one or two minds, in this golden age of scribbling, have, to
speak radically, been the true originators of a million volumes, which
haply shall have sprung from the seed of some singular book, or of
books counted in the dual.
Indignant authors, be not merciless on my candour: I confess too much
whereof I hold you guilty; I am one of yourselves, and I question not
that few of you can beat me in a certain sort of--I will say, unintended,
plagiarism; you are thieves--patience--I thieve from thieves; Diogenes
cannot see me any more than you; you copy phrases, I am perpetually
and unconsciously filching thoughts; my entomological netted-scissors,
wherewith I catch those small fowl on the wing, are always within
reach; you will never find me without well-tenanted pill-boxes in my
pocket, and perhaps a buzzing captive or two stuck in spinning
thraldom on my castor; you are petty larceners, I profess the like métier

of intellectual abstractor; you pilfer among a crowd of volumes,
manuscripts, rare editions, conflicting commentators, and your success
depends upon rëusage of the old materials; whereas I sit alone and
bookless in my dining-parlour, thinking over bygone fancies,
rëconsidering exploded notions, appropriating all I find of lumber in
the warehouse of my memory, and, if need be, without scruple, quietly
digesting, as my special provender, the thoughts of others, originated
ages ago.
Is it necessary to remind you--dropping this lightsome vein for a
precious moment--that I am penning away my "crudites," off-hand, at
the top of my speed? that my set intention is, if possible, to jot down
instanter my heavy brainful, and feel for once light headed?--I stick to
my title, 'An Author's Mind,' and that with a laudable scorn of
concealment, and an honest purpose not to pretend it better or wiser
than it is; then let no one blame me on the score of my fashion of
speech, or my sarcasms mingled with charity; for consistency with me
were inconsistent.
Neither let me, poor innocent, be accused of giving license to what a
palled public and dyspeptical reviewers will call for the thousandth
time a cacoethes; word of cabalistic look, unknown to Dr. Dilworth.
Truly, my masters, though disciple I be of venerable Martinus the
Scribbler; though, for aught I know, himself in progress of
transmigration; still, I submit, my cornucopia is not crammed with
leaves and chopped straw; and if, in utter carelessness, the fruit is
poured out pell-mell after this desultory fashion, yet, I wot, it is fruit,
though whether ripe or crude, or rotten, my husbandry takes little
thought: the mixture serves for my cider-press, and, fermentation over,
the product will be clarified. Judge me too, am I not consecutive? I've
shown man to be a writing animal; and writing, what it is and is not;
and meanwhile have been routing recreatively at pen's point whims,
and fancies, and ideas, and images, pulled in manfully by head and
shoulders: and now--after an episode, quite relevant and quite
Herodotean, concerning the consequences of a bit of successful
authorship on a man's scheme of life, to illustrate yet more the "author's
mind"--I shall proceed to tell all men how many books I might, could,

should, or would have written, but for reiterated and legitimated buts,
and how near of kin I must esteem myself to the illustrious J. of nursery
rhymes, being, as he is or was, "Mister Joe Jenkins, who played on the
fiddle, and began twenty tunes, but left off in the middle." Moreover,
no one can be ignorant of the close consanguinity recognised in every
age and every dictionary between I and J. But now for the episode:
If ever a toy were symbolical of life, that toy was a kaleidoscope: the
showy bits of tinsel, coloured glass, silk, beads, and feathers, with here
and there perchance a stray piece of iridescent ore or a pin, each, in its
turn of ideal multiplication, filling successively the field of vision; the
trifling touch that will disenchant the fairest patterns; the slightest
change, as in chemical arithmetic, that will make the whole mixture a
poison or a cordial. A man is vexed, the nerve of his equanimity
thrillingly touched at the tender elbow, and forthwith his whole
wholesome body writhes in pain; while, to speak morally, those useful