I am sorry to have detained your MS. so long, but part of the time I
have been away, and during the other portion of it, the fatigue that I
must undergo was all that my strength would bear.
I read your essay carefully in a few days after receiving it and laid
it aside for a second perusal. Now I despair of finding time for such
a second reading as I designed, and so must write you at once my
impressions after a single reading.
The inference concerning your mind that I draw from your essay enhances
the interest I previously felt in you. All that you tell me of yourself
has the same effect. You certainly have high, very high, mental power;
and the patience and persistency that you must have shown hitherto
assures me that you will in future be equal to the demands of your
intellect. As to publishing what you have now written, you must judge.
The main question, is whether you will be discouraged by failure of your
book. If not, publish, if you like; and then, if the public ignores your
thought, gather up your strength again and write so that they cannot
ignore you. For, in truth, the public does not like to think; it likes
to be amused; and conceives a sort of hatred against the writer who
would force it to the use of its intellect. This is invariably the case;
it will be so with you. If the public finds anything in your work that
can be condemned, it will be but too happy to pass sentence; if it can
make out to think that you are a pretender, it will gladly do so; if it
can turn its back upon you and ignore you, its back, and nothing else,
you will surely see. And this on account of your merits. You really have
thoughts. You make combinations of your own. You have freighted your
words out of your own mental experience. You do not flatter any of the
sects by using their cant. Now, then, be sure that you have got to do
finished work, finished in every minutest particular, for years, before
your claims will be allowed.
If you _were_ a pretender, your success in immediate prospect would
be more promising; the very difficulty is that you are not--that you
think--that the public must read you _humbly_, confessing that you have
intelligence beyond its own. I said that the general public wants to be
amused: I now add that it dearly desires to be flattered, or at least
allowed to flatter itself. Those people who have no thoughts of their
own are the very ones who hate mortally to admit to themselves that any
intelligence in the world is superior to their own. A noble nature
is indeed never so delighted as when it finds something that may be
lawfully reverenced; but all the ignoble keep up their self-complacence
by shutting their eyes to all superiority.
I state the case strongly, as you will feel it bye and bye. Mind, I am
not a disappointed man; and have met as generous appreciation as I ought
to wish. I am not misanthropic, nor in the least soured. I say all this,
not _against_ the public, but _for_ you.
Now, then, as to the essay. It is rich in thought. Everywhere are the
traces of a penetrating and sincere intellect. Much of the expression
is also good. The faults of it, _me judice_, are as follows: The
introduction I think too long. I should nearly throw away the first five
pages. Your true beginning I think to be near the bottom of the sixth
page, though the _island_ in the middle paragraph of that page is too
fine to be lost. From the sixth to about the twentieth I read with
hearty pleasure. Then begin subordinate essays in illustration of your
main theme. These are good in themselves, but their subordination is a
little obscured. I think careless readers--and most of your readers, be
sure, will be careless--will fail to perceive the connection. You are
younger than I, and will hope more from your readers; but I find even
superior men slow, _slow_, SLOW to understand--missing your point so
often! I think the relationship must be brought out more strongly,
and some very good sentences must be thrown out because they are more
related to the subordinate than the commanding subject. This is about
all that I have to say. Sometimes your sentences are a little heavy, but
you will find, little by little, happier terms of expression. I do not
in the least believe that you cannot in time write as well as I. What I
have done to earn expression I know better than you The crudities that I
have outgrown or outlabored, I also know.
You must be a little less careless about your spelling, simply because
these slips will discredit your thought in the eyes of superficial
critics.
You understand, of course, that I speak above of the general public--not
of the finer natures, who will welcome you with warm hands.
I fear that the results of my reading will not correspond to your
wishes, and that it was hardly worth your while to send me your MS. But
I am obliged to you for informing me of your existence, for I augur good
for my country from the discovery of every such intelligence as yours,
and I pledge to you my warm interest and regard.
Very cordially yours,