How to Fail in Literature | Page 9

heart that
is lonely, Only the sigh and the token That sob in the saying of Only!
In literature this is a certain way of failing, but I believe a person might
make a livelihood by writing verses like these--for music. Another
good way is to be very economical in your rhymes, only two to the four
lines, and regretfully vague. Thus:
SHADOWS.
In the slumber of the winter, In the secret of the snow, What is the
voice that is crying Out of the long ago?

When the accents of the children Are silent on the stairs, When the
poor forgets his troubles, And the rich forgets his cares.
What is the silent whisper That echoes in the room, When the days are
full of darkness, And the night is hushed in gloom?
'Tis the voice of the departed, Who will never come again, Who has left
the weary tumult, And the struggle and the pain. {5}
And my heart makes heavy answer, To the voice that comes no more,
To the whisper that is welling From the far off happy shore.
If you are not satisfied with these simple ways of not succeeding,
please try the Grosvenor Gallery style. Here the great point is to make
the rhyme arrive at the end of a very long word, you should also be free
with your alliterations.
LULLABY.
When the sombre night is dumb, Hushed the loud chrysanthemum,
Sister, sleep! Sleep, the lissom lily saith, Sleep, the poplar whispereth,
Soft and deep!
Filmy floats the wild woodbine, Jonquil, jacinth, jessamine, Float and
flow. Sleeps the water wild and wan, As in far off Toltecan Mexico.
See, upon the sun-dial, Waves the midnight's misty pall, Waves and
wakes. As, in tropic Timbuctoo, Water beasts go plashing through
Lilied lakes!
Alliteration is a splendid source of failure in this sort of poetry, and
adjectives like lissom, filmy, weary, weird, strange, make, or ought to
make, the rejection of your manuscript a certainty. The poem should, as
a rule, seem to be addressed to an unknown person, and should express
regret and despair for circumstances in the past with which the reader is
totally unacquainted. Thus:
GHOSTS.

We met at length, as Souls that sit At funeral feast, and taste of it, And
empty were the words we said, As fits the converse of the dead, For it
is long ago, my dear, Since we two met in living cheer, Yea, we have
long been ghosts, you know, And alien ways we twain must go, Nor
shall we meet in Shadow Land, Till Time's glass, empty of its sand, Is
filled up of Eternity. Farewell--enough for once to die - And far too
much it is to dream, And taste not the Lethaean stream, But bear the
pain of loves unwed Even here, even here, among the dead!
That is a cheerful intelligible kind of melody, which is often practised
with satisfactory results. Every form of imitation (imitating of course
only the faults of a favourite writer) is to be recommended.
Imitation does a double service, it secures the failure of the imitator and
also aids that of the unlucky author who is imitated. As soon as a new
thing appears in literature, many people hurry off to attempt something
of the same sort. It may be a particular trait and accent in poetry, and
the public, weary of the mimicries, begin to dislike the original.
"Most can grow the flowers now, For all have got the seed; And once
again the people Call it but a weed."
In fiction, if somebody brings in a curious kind of murder, or a study of
religious problems, or a treasure hunt, or what you will, others imitate
till the world is weary of murders, or theological flirtations, or the
search for buried specie, and the original authors themselves will fail,
unless they fish out something new, to be vulgarised afresh. Therefore,
imitation is distinctly to be urged on the young author.
As a rule, his method is this, he reads very little, but all that he reads is
BAD. The feeblest articles in the weakliest magazines, the very mildest
and most conventional novels appear to be the only studies of the
majority. Apparently the would-be contributor says to himself, or
herself, "well, I can do something almost on the level of this or that
maudlin and invertebrate novel." Then he deliberately sits down to rival
the most tame, dull, and illiterate compositions that get into print. In
this way bad authors become the literary parents of worse authors.
Nobody but a reader of MSS. knows what myriads of fiction are

written without one single new situation, original character, or fresh
thought. The most out-worn ideas: sudden loss of fortune; struggles;
faithlessness of First Lover; noble conduct of Second