George Eliot is said to have worked harder on “Romola” than
on any of her other books. In her own words: “I began it a
young woman--I finished it an old woman.” And yet but about
seventeen months were consumed in the work. Some authors have
lived long. Alexander von Humboldt lived to be over eighty.
Goethe was over eighty-one when he died. Kant lived his quiet
life for just eighty years, the quietest and most uneventful
life known to a man of genius. Titian died at the age of
ninety-nine. Michelangelo lived to be more than eighty. Among
the royal persons who have become known as authors are Queen
Victoria, King Oscar II, of Sweden; Dom Louis, of Portugal;
the Shar Nasr-ed Deen, of Persia; Queen Elizabeth, of Rumania;
Prince Nicholas, of Montenegro; Dom Pedro II, of Brazil; King
Louis II, of Bavaria, and several others. The novelists are
at present dominant among us, so far as popular acceptation
and remuneration go. It has been lately ascertained that Mr.
Tennyson made four thousand pounds a year by his poetry. Walter
Besant, who was seduced from the career of a college don by
the fascinations of the novelist’s art, earns more for any one
of his romances than Carlyle earned in the first ten years of
his literary career. Charles Reade averaged, we believe, five
pounds per page for his writings. Herbert Spencer’s remuneration
scarcely exceeded five shillings per page. Matthew Arnold’s
imaginative powers earned him an income at least four times
smaller than Wilkie Collins’ imagination could command. A
shoemaker’s son, a few years ago, wrote a short comic story
which tickled the public taste; his success was so immediate
that the public--represented by the publishers--afterward
paid him one thousand pounds a year for whatever he chose to
write.--_Christian At Work._
(171)
=Autograph Diplomacy=--See ASKING, BOLDNESS IN.