The Man of Letters as a Man of Business | Page 7

things, he is passing away, and that if the magazine
is not to pass away with the men who have made it, there must be a
constant infusion of fresh life. Few editors are such fools and knaves as
to let their personal feeling disable their judgment; and the young
writer who gets his manuscript back may be sure that it is not because
the editor dislikes him, for some reason or no reason. Above all, he can
trust me that his contribution has not been passed unread, or has failed
of the examination it merits. Editors are not men of infallible judgment,
but they do use their judgment, and it is usually good.
The young author who wins recognition in a first-class magazine has
achieved a double success, first, with the editor, and then with the best
reading public. Many factitious and fallacious literary reputations have
been made through books, but very few have been made through the
magazines, which are not only the best means of living, but of outliving,
with the author; they are both bread and fame to him. If I insist a little
upon the high office which this modern form of publication fulfils in
the literary world, it is because I am impatient of the antiquated and
ignorant prejudice which classes the magazines as ephemeral. They are
ephemeral in form, but in substance they are not ephemeral, and what is
best in them awaits its resurrection in the book, which, as the first form,
is so often a lasting death. An interesting proof of the value of the
magazine to literature is the fact that a good novel will have wider
acceptance as a book from having been a magazine serial.
I am not sure that the decay of the book is not owing somewhat to the
decay of reviewing. This does not now seem to me so thorough, or
even so general as it was some years ago, and I think the book oftener
comes to the buyer without the warrant of a critical estimate than it
once did. That is never the case with material printed in a magazine of
high class. A well-trained critic, who is bound by the strongest ties of
honor and interest not to betray either his employer or his public, has
judged it, and his practical approval is a warrant of quality.
VI.
Under the regime of the great literary periodicals the prosperity of
literary men would be much greater than it actually is, if the magazines
were altogether literary. But they are not, and this is one reason why

literature is still the hungriest of the professions. Two-thirds of the
magazines are made up of material which, however excellent, is
without literary quality. Very probably this is because even the highest
class of readers, who are the magazine readers, have small love of pure
literature, which seems to have been growing less and less in all classes.
I say seems, because there are really no means of ascertaining the fact,
and it may be that the editors are mistaken in making their periodicals
two-thirds popular science, politics, economics, and the timely topics
which I will call contemporanies; I have sometimes thought they were.
But however that may be, their efforts in this direction have narrowed
the field of literary industry, and darkened the hope of literary
prosperity kindled by the unexampled prosperity of their periodicals.
They pay very well indeed for literature; they pay from five or six
dollars a thousand words for the work of the unknown writer, to a
hundred and fifty dollars a thousand words for that of the most famous,
or the most popular, if there is a difference between fame and
popularity; but they do not, altogether, want enough literature to justify
the best business talent in devoting itself to belles- lettres, to fiction, or
poetry, or humorous sketches of travel, or light essays; business talent
can do far better in drygoods, groceries, drugs, stocks, real estate,
railroads, and the like. I do not think there is any danger of a ruinous
competition from it in the field which, though narrow, seems so rich to
us poor fellows, whose business talent is small, at the best.
The most of the material contributed to the magazines is the subject of
agreement between the editor and the author; it is either suggested by
the author, or is the fruit of some suggestion from the editor; in any
case the price is stipulated beforehand, and it is no longer the custom
for a well-known contributor to leave the payment to the justice or the
generosity of the publisher; that was never a fair thing to either, nor
ever a wise thing. Usually, the price is so much a thousand words, a
truly odious method of