SHAKSPERE.-MODERN PAINTERS, Vol. iv., pt. v., Chapt. xx., § 28, 29 and 30-John Ruskin FROM PADUA TO VENICE.-Scenes oF TRAVEL.- STONES OF VENICE, Vol. i., Chapt. xxx., INTRODUCTION. "THERE are three difficulties in authorship," says the author of Lacon, "to write anything worth publishing, to find honest men to publish it, and to get sensible people to read it when written." To remove the chief of these stumbling stones is the aim of the present work, I which has been undertaken in the belief that a few simple and practical rules for the guidance of beginners would remove much of that sheer ignorance which is the cause of so many literary failures. The chief incentives to authorship have always been "parts and poverty," and while the great growth of intellect in this age of general intelligence has increased the proportion of possible writers, the wages for good literary work are now distinctly worth winning. At no former period has literature been so widely diffused as at the present day, and those who can look back over thirty or forty years must observe an increase in the number of readers and an improvement in the tone and standard of popular literature, which plainly prove that year by year the demand for books is growing greater, and that any writer who has mastered the difficulties which beset all beginners is sure of gaining a hearing sooner or later. For the nice adaptation of style to the station of the reader has now been brought to such perfection that we find every class provided with mental food convenient for its needs. There is scarcely a household, above the ranks of the miserably poor, where some magazine or weekly paper does not bring fresh thoughts and interests to brighten the monotonous round of hard-working lives. Homes where a borrowed B weekly paper was once the only literary amusement to be counted on, have now a wide choice offered them in the numerous cheap and excellent magazines whose number is so rapidly increasing. Every variety of cultivated taste-scientific, antiquarian, artistic, scholarly and critical, is now ministered to in the steady stream of literature which flows through those country homes where, a short time since, a certain number of books collected in the early history of the family. was regarded as sufficient literary furniture, when eked out by a grave quarterly and a casual box from Mudie's. Writing his memories of the early years of the century, Serjeant Ballantine tells us that the magazines he remembers, then only amounted to about half-a-dozen, and with few exceptions they compare very ill with the almost countless periodicals now issued. Personalities and prejudices were openly cultivated in them. The disgraceful system of puffing the writers and their friends prevailed so widely that Christopher North boasted of the adroitness he had achieved in the art, whilst Macaulay sternly censured it as one of the most marked literary characteristics of • his day, and eloquently appealed to English authors by their honour and their self respect to let their work win its own way by its own merits. A comparison of the magazines of that day with those of the present shows a marked advance in literary ability, even in the least ambitious of them. Freshness and finish of style, we now find, distinguish the contributions in the place of the dull disquisitions, the borrowed wisdom, and the doubtful archæology which filled the old periodicals. Readers are more critical as well as more numerous, and the demand for good writing is so great that no one who can supply it need fear failure. But authors, unlike the proverbial critics, are not "ready-made," and if they do not literally require to serve their trade," they often, in the initial stages of their career, require such help and guidance as this book proposes to give them, so as to spare themselves and the much-enduring editors they beset, a weary 66 waste of time before they discover their own powers and the best use of them. Innumerable are the persons gifted with originality of thought and keen insight into life and character who fain would write, but that they fear to fail, who cannot muster the energy and courage without which talent is useless, and who cherish the common and entirely erroneous idea that only by means of personal influence can amateurs gain a hearing. Any writer who has achieved even the most modest success is besieged by requests from these feeble folk for introductions and assistance in making known their literary aspirations. If the importance of the plain rule, so emphatically insisted on in these pages, were only generally realized that the only sure passport to success is good work-this common dream of struggling into print by clinging to those who are practically powerless to help any but themselves, would cease to cause bitter disappointments. People who believe they can write, and who mean to succeed, will trust to themselves alone, and by patient perfecting of style and matter, and due study of the hints contained in this book, will win for themselves that happiness which is one of the greatest we know—the first certainty of success. "Before you attempt to write on any subject be quite certain that you can say something fresh about it," was the pencilled remark of a very distinguished historian, the editor of a famous magazine, when returning a rejected contribution. The first effect of his trenchant words on the recipient of them was a keen feeling of humiliation which seems to characterize the shock of rejection as peculiarly as does an intoxicating joy the first moment of realized success in letters. The unlucky aspirant, reading by the light of those severe remarks his rejected article, made the profound discovery that it was but "vacant chaff well meant for grain," and resolved to make the weighty words of the critic the test of all future work. And that writer, after many a bitter disappointment and defeat, had cause to be thankful for the advice so given; for in time the kindly interest of another literary man, no other than Charles Dickens-ever ready to encourage even the faintest promise of ability-secured him a small success, and so by slow degrees he learnt the great lesson of how to write so as, without help or favour, to secure due payment for readable work. The great requirements of a good literary style are summed up in this word "readable," so much in use in the profession of letters. The most ponderous learning on any subject and the most conscientious efforts to convey instruction cannot succeed without some graces of style. The art of being brief; of touching heavy subjects with a light hand; and of sparing all superfluous detail does not come by nature to all those who have something to say which is well worth writing, but till this art is gained the best efforts of the beginner must prove failures. It is not alone sufficient to have something fresh to say; for the rapidly developing judgment of the great mass of the public requires that it be well and brightly conveyed, and the priceless ornament of style is now of such importance that without it success is well nigh impossible. Carefully considered hints for its attainment will be found in this work, and it is scarcely possible to over-estimate its value to all who aim at success in literature. "There are wrongers of subjects as well as writers on them," says Coleridge, and our English literary history abounds in mournful examples of solid and laborious works in which no reader can take delight. Crabbe tells us of how in the elder days of heavy literature "Our patient fathers trifling themes laid by, And rolled o'er laboured works the attentive eye; Cloyed with a folio number once a week." And since Crabbe's day we have become even more imperative in our demand for a finished and yet easy |