Thackeray | Page 5

at last are crushed by it, of whom the
world knows nothing. A man can make the attempt though he has not a
coat fit to go out into the street with; or a woman, though she be almost
in rags. There is no apprenticeship wanted. Indeed there is no room for

such apprenticeship. It is an art which no one teaches; there is no
professor who, in a dozen lessons, even pretends to show the aspirant
how to write a book or an article. If you would be a watchmaker, you
must learn; or a lawyer, a cook, or even a housemaid. Before you can
clean a horse you must go into the stable, and begin at the beginning.
Even the cab-driving tiro must sit for awhile on the box, and learn
something of the streets, before he can ply for a fare. But the literary
beginner rushes at once at the top rung of his ladder;--as though a youth,
having made up his mind to be a clergyman, should demand, without
preliminary steps, to be appointed Bishop of London. That he should be
able to read and write is presumed, and that only. So much may be
presumed of everyone, and nothing more is wanted.
In truth nothing more is wanted,--except those inner lights as to which,
so many men live and die without having learned whether they possess
them or not. Practice, industry, study of literature, cultivation of taste,
and the rest, will of course lend their aid, will probably be necessary
before high excellence is attained. But the instances are not to
seek,--are at the fingers of us all,--in which the first uninstructed effort
has succeeded. A boy, almost, or perhaps an old woman, has sat down
and the book has come, and the world has read it, and the booksellers
have been civil and have written their cheques. When all trades, all
professions, all seats at offices, all employments at which a crust can be
earned, are so crowded that a young man knows not where to look for
the means of livelihood, is there not an attraction in this which to the
self-confident must be almost invincible? The booksellers are courteous
and write their cheques, but that is not half the whole? Monstrari digito!
That is obtained. The happy aspirant is written of in newspapers, or,
perhaps, better still, he writes of others. When the barrister of forty-five
has hardly got a name beyond Chancery Lane, this glorious young
scribe, with the first down on his lips, has printed his novel and been
talked about.
The temptation is irresistible, and thousands fall into it. How is a man
to know that he is not the lucky one or the gifted one? There is the table
and there the pen and ink. Among the unfortunate he who fails
altogether and from the first start is not the most unfortunate. A short

period of life is wasted, and a sharp pang is endured. Then the
disappointed one is relegated to the condition of life which he would
otherwise have filled a little earlier. He has been wounded, but not
killed, or even maimed. But he who has a little success, who succeeds
in earning a few halcyon, but, ah! so dangerous guineas, is drawn into a
trade from which he will hardly escape till he be driven from it, if he
come out alive, by sheer hunger. He hangs on till the guineas become
crowns and shillings,--till some sad record of his life, made when he
applies for charity, declares that he has worked hard for the last year or
two and has earned less than a policeman in the streets or a porter at a
railway. It is to that that he is brought by applying himself to a business
which requires only a table and chair, with pen, ink, and paper! It is to
that which he is brought by venturing to believe that he has been gifted
with powers of imagination, creation, and expression.
The young man who makes the attempt knows that he must run the
chance. He is well aware that nine must fail where one will make his
running good. So much as that does reach his ears, and recommends
itself to his common sense. But why should it not be he as well as
another? There is always some lucky one winning the prize. And this
prize when it has been won is so well worth the winning! He can
endure starvation,--so he tells himself,--as well as another. He will try.
But yet he knows that he has but one chance out of ten in his favour,
and it is only in his happier moments that he flatters himself that that
remains to him. Then there falls upon him,--in the midst