The Principles of Success in Literature | Page 5

urging all writers to be steadfast in reliance on the ultimate victory
of excellence, we should no less strenuously urge upon them to beware
of the intemperate arrogance which attributes failure to a degraded
condition of the public mind. The instinct which leads the world to
worship success is not dangerous. The book which succeeds
accomplishes its aim. The book which fails may have many
excellencies, but they must have been misdirected. Let us, however,
understand what is meant by failure. From want of a clear recognition
of this meaning, many a serious writer has been made bitter by the
reflection that shallow, feeble works have found large audiences,
whereas his own work has not paid the printing expenses. He forgets
that the readers who found instruction and amusement in the shallow
books could have found none in his book, because he had not the art of
making his ideas intelligible and attractive to them, or had not duly
considered what food was assimilable by their minds. It is idle to write
in hieroglyphics for the mass when only priests can read the sacred
symbols.
No one, it is hoped, will suppose that by what is here said I
countenance the notion which is held by some authors--a notion
implying either arrogant self-sufficiency or mercenary servility--that to
succeed, a man should write down to the public. Quite the reverse. To
succeed, a man should write up to his ideal. He should do his very best;
certain that the very best will still fall short of what the public can
appreciate. He will only degrade his own mind by putting forth works
avowedly of inferior quality; and will find himself greatly surpassed by
writers whose inferior workmanship has nevertheless the indefinable
aspect of being the best they can produce. The man of common mind is
more directly in sympathy with the vulgar public, and can speak to it
more intelligibly, than any one who is condescending to it. If you feel
yourself to be above the mass, speak so as to raise the mass to the
height of your argument. It may be that the interval is too great. It may

be that the nature of your arguments is such as to demand from the
audience an intellectual preparation, and a habit of concentrated
continuity of thought, which cannot be expected from a miscellaneous
assembly. The scholarship of a Scaliger or the philosophy of a Kant
will obviously require an audience of scholars and philosophers. And in
cases where the nature of the work limits the class of readers, no man
should complain if the readers he does not address pass him by to
follow another. He will not allure these by writing down to them; or if
he allure them, he will lose those who properly constitute his real
audience.
A writer misdirects his talent if he lowers his standard of excellence.
Whatever he can do best let him do that, certain of reward in proportion
to his excellence. The reward is not always measurable by the number
of copies sold; that simply measures the extent of his public. It may
prove that he has stirred the hearts and enlightened the minds of many.
It may also prove, as Johnson says, "that his nonsense suits their
nonsense." The real reward of Literature is in the sympathy of
congenial minds, and is precious in proportion to the elevation of those
minds, and the gravity with which such sympathy moves: the
admiration of a mathematician for the MECANIQUE CELESTE, for
example, is altogether higher in kind than the admiration of a novel
reader for the last "delightful story." And what should we think of
Laplace if he were made bitter by the wider popularity of Dumas?
Would he forfeit the admiration of one philosopher for that of a
thousand novel readers?
To ask this question is to answer it; yet daily experience tells us that not
only in lowering his standard, but in running after a popularity
incompatible with the nature of his talent, does many a writer forfeit his
chance of success. The novel and the drama, by reason of their
commanding influence over a large audience, often seduce writers to
forsake the path on which they could labour with some success, but on
which they know that only a very small audience can be found; as if it
were quantity more than quality, noise rather than appreciation, which
their mistaken desires sought. Unhappily for them, they lose the
substance, and only snap at the shadow. The audience may be large, but
it will not listen to them. The novel may be more popular and more
lucrative, when successful, than the history or the essay; but to make it

popular and lucrative the writer needs a special talent, and this, as was
before