Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 | Page 2

Nemesis or Rhadamanthus, but a bland and virtuous man,
exceedingly anxious to secure plenty of good subscribers and
contributors, and very ready to perform any acts of kindness not
inconsistent with this grand design. Draw near him, therefore, with soft
approaches and mild persuasions. Do not treat him like an enemy, and
insist on reading your whole manuscript aloud to him, with appropriate
gestures. His time has some value, if yours has not; and he has
therefore educated his eye till it has become microscopic, like a
naturalist's, and can classify nine out of ten specimens by one glance at
a scale or a feather. Fancy an ambitious echinoderm claiming a private
interview with Agassiz, to demonstrate by verbal arguments that he is a
mollusk! Besides, do you expect to administer the thing orally to each
of the two hundred thousand, more or less, who turn the leaves of the
"Atlantic"? You are writing for the average eye, and must submit to its
verdict. "Do not trouble yourself about the light on your statue; it is the
light of the public square which must test its value."
Do not despise any honest propitiation, however small, in dealing with
your editor. Look to the physical aspect of your manuscript, and
prepare your page so neatly that it shall allure instead of repelling. Use

good pens, black ink, nice white paper and plenty of it. Do not emulate
"paper-sparing Pope," whose chaotic manuscript of the "Iliad," written
chiefly on the backs of old letters, still remains in the British Museum.
If your document be slovenly, the presumption is that its literary
execution is the same, Pope to the contrary notwithstanding. An editor's
eye becomes carnal, and is easily attracted by a comely outside. If you
really wish to obtain his good-will for your production, do not first tax
his time for deciphering it, any more than in visiting a millionnaire to
solicit a loan you would begin by asking him to pay for the hire of the
carriage which takes you to his door.
On the same principle, send your composition in such a shape that it
shall not need the slightest literary revision before printing. Many a
bright production dies discarded which might have been made
thoroughly presentable by a single day's labor of a competent scholar,
in shaping, smoothing, dovetailing, and retrenching. The revision
seems so slight an affair that the aspirant cannot conceive why there
should be so much fuss about it.
"The piece, you think, is incorrect; why, take it; I'm all submission;
what you'd have it, make it."
But to discharge that friendly office no universal genius is salaried; and
for intellect in the rough there is no market.
Rules for style, as for manners, must be chiefly negative: a positively
good style indicates certain natural powers in the individual, but an
unexceptionable style is merely a matter of culture and good models.
Dr. Channing established in New England a standard of style which
really attained almost the perfection of the pure and the colorless, and
the disciplinary value of such a literary influence, in a raw and crude
nation, has been very great; but the defect of this standard is that it ends
in utterly renouncing all the great traditions of literature, and ignoring
the magnificent mystery of words. Human language may be polite and
powerless in itself, uplifted with difficulty into expression by the high
thoughts it utters, or it may in itself become so saturated with warm life
and delicious association that every sentence shall palpitate and thrill
with the mere fascination of the syllables. The statue is not more surely
included in the block of marble than is all conceivable splendor of
utterance in "Worcester's Unabridged." And as Ruskin says of painting
that it is in the perfection and precision of the instantaneous line that

the claim to immortality is made, so it is easy to see that a phrase may
outweigh a library. Keats heads the catalogue of things real with "sun,
moon, and passages of Shakspeare"; and Keats himself has left behind
him winged wonders of expression which are not surpassed by
Shakspeare, or by any one else who ever dared touch the English
tongue. There may be phrases which shall be palaces to dwell in,
treasure-houses to explore; a single word may be a window from which
one may perceive all the kingdoms of the earth and the glory of them.
Oftentimes a word shall speak what accumulated volumes have labored
in vain to utter: there may be years of crowded passion in a word, and
half a life in a sentence.
Such being the majesty of the art you seek to practise, you can at least
take time and deliberation before dishonoring it. Disabuse yourself
especially of the belief that any