How to Fail in Literature | Page 4

but no other gift from any Muse.
This class is the more numerous, but the smallest class of all has both
the power and the will to excel in letters. The desire to write, the love
of letters may shew itself in childhood, in boyhood, or youth, and mean
nothing at all, a mere harvest of barren blossom without fragrance or
fruit. Or, again, the concern about letters may come suddenly, when a
youth that cared for none of those things is waning, it may come when

a man suddenly finds that he has something which he really must tell.
Then he probably fumbles about for a style, and his first fresh impulses
are more or less marred by his inexperience of an art which beguiles
and fascinates others even in their school-days.
It is impossible to prophesy the success of a man of letters from his
early promise, his early tastes; as impossible as it is to predict, from her
childish grace, the beauty of a woman.
But the following remarks on How to fail in Literature are certainly
meant to discourage nobody who loves books, and has an impulse to
tell a story, or to try a song or a sermon. Discouragements enough exist
in the pursuit of this, as of all arts, crafts, and professions, without my
adding to them. Famine and Fear crouch by the portals of literature as
they crouch at the gates of the Virgilian Hades. There is no more
frequent cause of failure than doubt and dread; a beginner can scarcely
put his heart and strength into a work when he knows how long are the
odds against his victory, how difficult it is for a new man to win a
hearing, even though all editors and publishers are ever pining for a
new man. The young fellow, unknown and unwelcomed, who can sit
down and give all his best of knowledge, observation, humour, care,
and fancy to a considerable work has got courage in no common
portion; he deserves to triumph, and certainly should not be
disheartened by our old experience. But there be few beginners of this
mark, most begin so feebly because they begin so fearfully. They are
already too discouraged, and can scarce do themselves justice. It is
easier to write more or less well and agreeably when you are certain of
being published and paid, at least, than to write well when a dozen
rejected manuscripts are cowering (as Theocritus says) in your chest,
bowing their pale faces over their chilly knees, outcast, hungry,
repulsed from many a door. To write excellently, brightly, powerfully,
with these poor unwelcomed wanderers, returned MSS., in your
possession, is difficult indeed. It might be wiser to do as M. Guy de
Maupassant is rumoured to have done, to write for seven years, and
shew your essays to none but a mentor as friendly severe as M.
Flaubert. But all men cannot have such mentors, nor can all afford so
long an unremunerative apprenticeship. For some the better plan is

NOT to linger on the bank, and take tea and good advice, as Keats said,
but to plunge at once in mid-stream, and learn swimming of necessity.
One thing, perhaps, most people who succeed in letters so far as to keep
themselves alive and clothed by their pens will admit, namely, that
their early rejected MSS. DESERVED TO BE REJECTED. A few days
ago there came to the writer an old forgotten beginner's attempt by
himself. Whence it came, who sent it, he knows not; he had forgotten
its very existence. He read it with curiosity; it was written in a very
much better hand than his present scrawl, and was perfectly legible. But
READABLE it was not. There was a great deal of work in it, on an out
of the way topic, and the ideas were, perhaps, not quite without novelty
at the time of its composition. But it was cramped and thin, and
hesitating between several manners; above all it was uncommonly dull.
If it ever was sent to an editor, as I presume it must have been, that
editor was trebly justified in declining it. On the other hand, to be
egotistic, I have known editors reject the attempts of those old days,
and afterwards express lively delight in them when they struggled into
print, somehow, somewhere. These worthy men did not even know that
they had despised and refused what they came afterwards rather to
enjoy.
Editors and publishers, these keepers of the gates of success, are not
infallible, but their opinion of a beginner's work is far more correct than
his own can ever be. They should not depress him quite, but if they are
long unanimous in holding him cheap, he is warned, and had better
withdraw from