The balance against them is now over £350. How completely they must have
been squashed unless I had had a little money of my own. Is it not
likely that many a better writer than I am is squashed through want of
money? Whatever I do I must not die poor; these examples of ill-requited
labour are immoral, they discourage the effort of those who could and
would do good things if they did not know that it would ruin themselves
and their families; moreover, they set people on to pamper a dozen fools
for each neglected man of merit, out of compunction. Genius, they say,
always wears an invisible cloak; these men wear invisible
cloaks—therefore they are geniuses; and it flatters them to think that
they can see more than their neighbours. The neglect of one such man as
the author of _Hudibras_ is compensated for by the petting of a dozen
others who would be the first to jump upon the author of _Hudibras_ if he
were to come back to life.
Heaven forbid that I should compare myself to the author of _Hudibras_,
but still, if my books succeed after my death—which they may or may not,
I know nothing about it—any way, if they do succeed, let it be understood
that they failed during my life for a few very obvious reasons of which I
was quite aware, for the effect of which I was prepared before I wrote my
books, and which on consideration I found insufficient to deter me. I
attacked people who were at once unscrupulous and powerful, and I made no
alliances. I did this because I did not want to be bored and have my
time wasted and my pleasures curtailed. I had money enough to live on,
and preferred addressing myself to posterity rather than to any except a
very few of my own contemporaries. Those few I have always kept well in
mind. I think of them continually when in doubt about any passage, but
beyond those few I will not go. Posterity will give a man a fair
hearing; his own times will not do so if he is attacking vested
interests, and I have attacked two powerful sets of vested interests at
once. [The Church and Science.] What is the good of addressing people
who will not listen? I have addressed the next generation and have
therefore said many things which want time before they become palatable.
Any man who wishes his work to stand will sacrifice a good deal of his
immediate audience for the sake of being attractive to a much larger
number of people later on. He cannot gain this later audience unless he
has been fearless and thorough-going, and if he is this he is sure to
have to tread on the corns of a great many of those who live at the same
time with him, however little he may wish to do so. He must not expect
these people to help him on, nor wonder if, for a time, they succeed in
snuffing him out. It is part of the swim that it should be so. Only, as
one who believes himself to have practised what he preaches, let me
assure any one who has money of his own that to write fearlessly for
posterity and not get paid for it is much better fun than I can imagine
its being to write like, we will say, George Eliot and make a lot of
money by it. [1883.]