The most popular of English authors has given us an account of what
within his experience (and it was a large one) was the impression among
the public at large of the manner in which his work was done. They
pictured him, he says,
as a radiant personage whose whole time is devoted to idleness and
pastime; who keeps a prolific mind in a sort of corn-sieve and lightly
shakes a bushel of it out sometimes in an odd half-hour after
breakfast. It would amaze their incredulity beyond all measure to" be
told that such elements as patience, study, punctuality, determination,
self-denial, training of mind and body, hours of application and
seclusion to produce what they read in seconds, enter in such a career
… correction and recorrection in the blotted manuscript; consideration;
new observations; the patient massing of many reflections, experiences,
and imaginings for one minute purpose; and the patient separation from
the heap of all the fragments that will unite to serve it—these would
be unicorns and griffins to them—fables altogether.
And as it was, a quarter of a century ago, when those words were
written, so it is now: the phrase of 'light literature' as applied to
fiction having once been invented, has stuck, with a vengeance, to
those who profess it.
Yet to 'make the thing that is not as the thing that is' is not (though
it may seem to be the same thing) so easy as lying.
Among a host of letters received in connection with an article
published in the _Nineteenth Century_, entitled 'The Literary Calling
and its Future,' and which testify in a remarkable manner to the
pressing need (therein alluded to) of some remunerative vocation among
the so-called educated classes, there are many which are obviously
written under the impression that Dogberry's view of writing coming 'by
nature' is especially true of the writing of fiction. Because I
ventured to hint that the study of Greek was not essential to the
calling of a story-teller, or of a contributor to the periodicals, or
even of a journalist, these gentlemen seem to jump to the conclusion
that the less they know of anything the better. Nay, some of them,
discarding all theories (in the fashion that Mr. Carlyle's heroes are
wont to discard all formulas), proceed to the practical with quite an
indecent rapidity; they treat my modest hints for their instruction as
so much verbiage, and myself as a mere convenient channel for the
publication of their lucubrations. 'You talk of a genuine literary
talent being always appreciated by editors,' they write (if not in so
many words by implication); 'well, here is an admirable specimen of it
(enclosed), and if your remarks are worth a farthing you will get it
published for us, somewhere or another, _instanter_, and hand us over
the cheque for it. Nor are even these the most unreasonable of my
correspondents; for a few, with many acknowledgments for my kindness in
having provided a lucrative profession for them, announce their
intention of throwing up their present less congenial callings, and
coming up to London (one very literally from the Land's End) to live
upon it, or, that failing (as there is considerable reason to expect it
will), upon _me_.
With some of these correspondents, however, it is impossible
(independent of their needs) not to feel an earnest sympathy; they have
evidently not only aspirations, but considerable mental gifts, though
these have unhappily been cultivated to such little purpose for the
object they have in view that they might almost as well have been left
untilled. In spite of what I ventured to urge respecting the advantage
of knowing 'science, history, politics, English literature, and the art
of composition,' they 'don't see why' they shouldn't get on without
them. Especially with those who aspire to write fiction (which, by its
intrinsic attractiveness no less than by the promise it affords of
golden grain, tempts the majority), it is quite pitiful to note how
they cling to that notion of 'the corn-sieve,' and cannot be persuaded
that story-telling requires an apprenticeship like any other calling.
They flatter themselves that they can weave plots as the spider spins
his thread from (what let us delicately term) his inner consciousness,
and fondly hope that intuition will supply the place of experience.
Some of them, with a simplicity that recalls the days of Dick
Whittington, think that 'coming up to London' is the essential step to
this line of business, as though the provinces contained no
fellow-creatures worthy to be depicted by their pen, or as though, in
the metropolis, Society would at once exhibit itself to them without
concealment, as fashionable beauties bare themselves to the
photographers.
This is, of course, the laughable side of the affair, but, to me at
least, it has also a serious one; for, to my considerable embarrassment
and distress, I find that my well-meaning attempt to point out the
advantages of literature as a profession has received a much too free
translation, and implanted in many minds hopes that are not only
sanguine but Utopian.
For what was written in the essay alluded to I have nothing to reproach
myself with, for I told no more than the truth. Nor does the
unsettlement of certain young gentleman's futures (since by their own
showing they were to the last degree unstable to begin with) affect me
so much as their parents and guardians appear to expect; but I am sorry
to have shaken however undesignedly, the 'pillars of domestic peace' in
any case, and desirous to make all the reparation in my power. I regret
most heartily that I am unable to place all literary aspirants in
places of emolument and permanency out of hand; but really (with the
exception perhaps of the Universal Provider in Westbourne Grove) this
is hardly to be expected of any man. The gentleman who raised the
devil, and was compelled to furnish occupation for him, affords in fact
the only appropriate parallel to my unhappy case. 'If you can do
nothing to provide my son with another place,' writes one indignant
Paterfamilias, 'at least you owe it to him' (as if I, and not Nature
herself, had made the lad dissatisfied with his high stool in a
solicitor's office!) 'to give him some practical hints by which he may
become a successful writer of fiction.'
One would really think that this individual imagined story-telling to
be a sort of sleight-of-hand trick, and that all that is necessary to
the attainment of the art is to learn 'how it's done.' I should not
like to say that I have known any members of my own profession who are
'no conjurors,' but it is certainly not by conjuring that they have
succeeded in it.
'You talk of the art of composition,' writes, on the other hand,
another angry correspondent, 'as though it were one of the exact
sciences; you might just as well advise your "clever Jack" to study the
art of playing the violin.' So that one portion of the public appears
to consider the calling of literature mechanical, while another holds
it to be a soft of divine instinct!
Since the interest in this subject proves to be so wide-spread, I trust
it will not be thought presumptuous in me to offer my own humble
experience in this matter for what it is worth. To the public at large
a card of admission to my poor manufactory of fiction—a 'very one-horse
affair,' as an American gentleman, with whom I had a little difficulty
concerning copyright, once described it—may not afford the same
satisfaction as a ticket for the private view of the Royal Academy; but
the stings of conscience urge me to make to Paterfamilias what amends
in the way of 'practical hints' lie in my power, for the wrong I have
done to his offspring; and I therefore venture to address to those whom
it may concern, and to those only, a few words on the Art of
Story-telling.
The chief essential for this line of business, yet one that is much
disregarded by many young writers, is the having a story to tell. It is
a common supposition that the story will come if you only sit down with
a pen in your hand and wait long enough—a parallel case to that which
assigns one cow's tail as the measure of distance between this planet
and the moon. It is no use 'throwing off' a few brilliant ideas at the
commencement, if they are only to be 'passages that lead to nothing;'
you must have distinctly in your mind at first what you intend to say
at last. 'Let it be granted,' says a great writer (though not one
distinguished in fiction), 'that a straight line be drawn from any one
point to any other point;' only you must have the 'other point' to
begin with, or you can't draw the line. So far from being 'straight,'
it goes wabbling aimlessly about like a wire fastened at one end and
not at the other, which may dazzle, but cannot sustain; or rather what
it does sustain is so exceedingly minute, that it reminds one of the
minnow which the inexperienced angler flatters himself he has caught,
but which the fisherman has in fact previously put on his hook for
bait.
This class of writer is not altogether unconscious of the absence of
dramatic interest in his composition. He writes to his editor (I have
read a thousand such letters): 'It has been my aim, in the enclosed
contribution, to steer clear of the faults of the sensational school of
fiction, and I have designedly abstained from stimulating the
unwholesome taste for excitement.' In which high moral purpose he has
undoubtedly succeeded; but, unhappily, in nothing else. It is quite
true that some writers of fiction neglect 'story' almost entirely, but
then they are perhaps the greatest writers of all. Their genius is so
transcendent that they can afford to dispense with 'plot;' their
humour, their pathos, and their delineation of human nature are amply
sufficient, without any such meretricious attraction; whereas our too
ambitious young friend is in the position of the needy knife-grinder,
who has not only no story to tell, but in lieu of it only holds up his
coat and breeches 'torn in the scuffle'—the evidence of his desperate
and ineffectual struggles with literary composition. I have known such
an aspirant to instance Miss Gaskell's 'Cranford' as a parallel to the
backboneless flesh-and-bloodless creation of his own immature fancy,
and to recommend the acceptance of the latter upon the ground of their
common rejection of startling plot and dramatic situation. The two
compositions have certainly _that_ in common; and the flawless diamond
has some things, such as mere sharpness and smoothness, in common with
the broken beer-bottle.
Many young authors of the class I have in my mind, while more modest as
respects their own merits, are even still less so as regards their
expectations from others. 'If you will kindly furnish me with a
subject,' so runs a letter now before me, 'I am sure I could do very
well; my difficulty is that I never can think of anything to write
about. Would you be so good as to oblige me with a plot for a novel?'
It would have been infinitely more reasonable of course, and much
cheaper, for me to grant it, if the applicant had made a request for my
watch and chain;[6] but the marvel is that folks should feel any
attraction towards a calling for which Nature has denied them even the
raw materials. It is true that there are some great talkers who have
manifestly nothing to say, but they don't ask their hearers to supply
them with a topic of conversation in order to be set agoing.
[6] To compare small things with great, I remember Sir Walter Scott
being thus applied to for some philanthropic object. 'Money,' said the
applicant, who had some part proprietorship in a literary miscellany,
'I don't ask for, since I know you have many claims upon your purse;
but would you write us a little paper gratuitously for the
"Keepsake"?'
'My great difficulty,' the would-be writer of fiction often says, 'is
how to begin;' whereas in fact the difficulty arises rather from his
not knowing how to end. Before undertaking the management of a train,
however short, it is absolutely necessary to know its destination.
Nothing is more common than to hear it said that an author 'does not
know where to stop;' but how much more deplorable is the position of
the passengers when there is no terminus whatsoever! They feel their
carriage 'slowing,' and put their heads expectantly out of window, but
there is no platform—no station. When they took their tickets, they
understood that they were 'booked through' to the _dénouement_, and
certainly had no idea of having been brought so far merely to admire
the scenery, for which only a very few care the least about.
As a rule, anyone who can tell a good story can write one, so there
really need be no mistake about his qualification; such a man will be
careful not to be wearisome, and to keep his point, or his catastrophe,
well in hand. Only, in writing, there is necessarily greater art.
_There_ expansion is of course absolutely necessary; but this is not to
be done, like spreading gold leaf, by flattening out good material.
_That_ is 'padding,' a device as dangerous as it is unworthy; it is
much better to make your story a pollard—to cut it down to a mere
anecdote—than to get it lost in a forest of verbiage. No line of it,
however seemingly discursive, should be aimless, but should have some
relation to the matter in hand; and if you find the story interesting
to yourself notwithstanding that you know the end of it, it will
certainly interest the reader.
The manner in which a good story grows under the hand is so remarkable,
that no tropic vegetation can show the like of it. For, consider, when
you have got your germ—the mere idea, not half a dozen lines
perhaps—which is to form your plot, how small a thing it is compared
with, say, the thousand pages which it has to occupy in the
three-volume novel! Yet to the story-teller the germ is everything.
When I was a very young man—a quarter of a century ago, alas!—and had
very little experience in these matters, I was reading on a coachbox
(for I read everywhere in those days) an account of some gigantic
trees; one of them was described as sound outside, but within, for many
feet, a mass of rottenness and decay. If a boy should climb up
birdsnesting into the fork of it, thought I, he might go down feet
first and hands overhead, and never be heard of again. How inexplicable
too, as well as melancholy, such a disappearance would be! Then, 'as
when a great thought strikes along the brain and flushes all the
cheek,' it struck me what an appropriate end it would be—with fear
(lest he should turn up again) instead of hope for the fulcrum to move
the reader—for a bad character of a novel. Before I had left the
coachbox I had thought out 'Lost Sir Massingberd.'
The character was drawn from life, but unfortunately from hearsay; he
had flourished—to the great terror of his neighbours—two generations
before me, so that I had to be indebted to others for his portraiture,
which was a great disadvantage. It was necessary that the lost man
should be an immense scoundrel to prevent pity being excited by the
catastrophe, and at that time I did not know any very wicked people.
The book was a successful one, but it needs no critic to point out how
much better the story might have been told. The interest in the
gentleman, buried upright in his oak coffin, is inartistically weakened
by other sources of excitement; like an extravagant cook, the young
author is apt to be too lavish with his materials, and in after days,
when the larder is more difficult to fill, he bitterly regrets it. The
representation of a past time I also found it very difficult to
compass, and I am convinced that for any writer to attempt such a
thing, when he can avoid it, is an error in judgment. The author who
undertakes to resuscitate and clothe with flesh and blood the dry bones
of his ancestors, has indeed this advantage, that, however unlifelike
his characters may be, there is no one in a position to prove it; it is
not 'a difference of opinion between himself and twelve of his
fellow-countrymen,' or a matter on which he can be condemned by
overwhelming evidence; but, on the other hand, he creates for himself
unnecessary difficulties. I will add, for the benefit of those literary
aspirants to whom these remarks are especially addressed—a circumstance
which, I hope, will be taken as an excuse for the writing of my own
affairs at all, which would otherwise be an unpardonable
presumption—that these difficulties are not the worst of it; for when
the novel founded on the Past has been written, it will not be read by
a tenth of those who would read it if it were a novel of the Present.
Even at the date I speak of, however, I was not so young as to attempt
to create the characters of a story out of my own imagination, and I
believe that the whole of its _dramatis personæ_ (except the chief
personage) were taken from the circle of my own acquaintance. This is a
matter, by-the-bye, on which considerable judgment and good taste have
to be exercised; for if the likeness of the person depicted is
recognisable by his friends (he never recognises it by any chance
himself), or still more by his enemies, it is no longer a sketch from
life, but a lampoon. It will naturally be asked by some: 'But if you
draw the man to the life, how can he fail to be known?' For this there
is the simplest remedy. You describe his character, but under another
skin; if he is tall you make him short, if dark, fair; or you make such
alterations in his circumstances as shall prevent identification, while
retaining them to a sufficient extent to influence his behaviour. In
the framework which most (though not all) skilled workmen draw of their
stories before they begin to furnish them with so much even as a
door-mat, the real name of each individual to be described should be
placed (as a mere aid to memory) by the side of that under which he
appears in the drama; and I would strongly recommend the builder to
write his real names in cipher; for I have known at least one instance
in which the entire list of the _dramatis personæ_ of a novel was
carried off by a person more curious than conscientious, and afterwards
revealed to those concerned—a circumstance which, though it increased
the circulation of the story, did not add to the personal popularity of
the author.
If a story-teller is prolific, the danger of his characters coinciding
with those of people in real life who are unknown to him is much
greater than would be imagined; the mere similarity of name may of
course be disregarded; but when in addition to that there is also a
resemblance of circumstance, it is difficult to persuade the man of
flesh and blood that his portrait is an undesigned one. The author of
'Vanity Fair' fell, in at least one instance, into a most unfortunate
mistake of this kind; while a not less popular author even gave his
hero the same name and place in the Ministry which were (subsequently)
possessed by a living politician.
It is better, however, for his own reputation that the story-teller
should risk a few actions for libel on account of these unfortunate
coincidences than that he should adopt the melancholy device of using
blanks or asterisks. With the minor novelists of a quarter of a century
ago it was quite common to introduce their characters as Mr. A and Mr.
B, and very difficult their readers found it to interest themselves in
the fortunes and misfortunes of an initial:
It was in the summer of the year 18—, and the sun was setting behind
the low western hills beneath which stands the town of C; its dying
gleams glistened on the weather-cock of the little church, beneath
whose tower two figures were standing, so deep in shadow that little
more could be made out concerning them save that they were young
persons of the opposite sex. The elder and taller, however, was the
fascinating Lord B; the younger (presenting a strong contrast to her
companion in social position, but yet belonging to the true nobility of
nature) was no other than the beautiful Patty G, the cobbler's
daughter.
This style of narrative should be avoided.
Another difficulty of the story-teller, and one unhappily in which no
advice can be of much service to him, is how to describe the lapse of
time and of locomotion. To the dramatist nothing is easier than to
print in the middle of his playbill, 'Forty years are here supposed to
have elapsed;' or 'Scene I.: A drawing-room in Mayfair; Scene II.:
Greenland.' But the story-teller has to describe how these little
changes are effected, without being able to take his readers into his
confidence.[7] He can't say, 'Gentle reader, please to imagine that the
winter is over, and the summer has come round since the conclusion of
our last chapter.' Curiously enough, however, the lapse of years is far
easier to suggest than that of hours; and locomotion from Islington to
India than the act, for instance, of leaving the room. If passion
enters into the scene, and your heroine can be represented as banging
the door behind her, and bringing down the plaster from the ceiling,
the thing is easy enough, and may be even made a dramatic incident; but
to describe, without baldness, Jones rising from the tea-table and
taking his departure in cold blood, is a much more difficult business
than you may imagine. When John the footman has to enter and interrupt
a conversation on the stage, the audience see him come and go, and
think nothing of it; but to inform the reader of your novel of a
similar incident—and especially of John's going—without spoiling the
whole scene by the introduction of the commonplace, requires (let me
tell you) the touch of a master.
[7] That last, indeed, is a thing which, with all deference to some
great names in fiction, should in my judgment never be done. It is
hard enough for him as it is to simulate real life, without the poor
showman's reaching out from behind the curtain to shake hands with his
audience.
When you have got the outline of your plot, and the characters that
seem appropriate to play in it, you turn to that so-called 'commonplace
book,' in which, if you know your trade, you will have set down
anything noteworthy and illustrative of human nature that has come
under your notice, and single out such instances as are most fitting;
and finally you will select your scene (or the opening one) in which
your drama is to be played. And here I may say, that while it is
indispensable that the persons represented should be familiar to you,
it is not necessary that the places should be; you should have visited
them, of course, in person, but it is my experience that for a
description of the salient features of any locality the less you stay
there the better. The man who has lived in Switzerland all his life can
never describe it (to the outsider) so graphically as the (intelligent)
tourist; just as the man who has science at his fingers' ends does not
succeed so well as the man with whom science has not yet become second
nature, in making an abstruse subject popular.
Nor is it to be supposed that a story with very accurate local
colouring cannot be written, the scenes of which are placed in a
country which the writer has never beheld. This requires, of course,
both study and judgment, but it can be done so as to deceive, if not
the native, at least the Englishman who has himself resided there. I
never yet knew an Australian who could be persuaded that the author of
'Never Too Late to Mend' had not visited the underworld, or a sailor
that he who wrote 'Hard Cash' had never been to sea. The fact is,
information, concerning which dull folks make so much fuss, can be
attained by anybody who chooses to spend his time that way; and by
persons of intelligence (who are not so solicitous to know how blacking
is made) can be turned, in a manner not dreamt of by cram-coaches, to
really good account.
The general impression perhaps conveyed by the above remarks will be
that to those who go to work in the manner described—for many writers
of course have quite other processes—story-telling must be a mechanical
trade. Yet nothing can be farther from the fact. These preliminary
arrangements have the effect of so steeping the mind in the subject in
hand, that when the author begins his work he is already in a world
apart from his everyday one; the characters of his story people it; and
the events that occur to them are as material, so far as the writer is
concerned, as though they happened under his roof. Indeed, it is a
question for the metaphysician whether the professional story-teller
has not a shorter lease of life than his fellow-creatures, since, in
addition to his hours of sleep (of which he ought by rights to have
much more than the usual proportion), he passes a large part of his
sentient being outside the pale of ordinary existence. The reference to
sleep 'by rights' may possibly suggest to the profane that the
storyteller has a claim to it on the ground of having induced slumber
in his fellow-creatures; but my meaning is that the mental wear and
tear caused by work of this kind is infinitely greater than that
produced by mere application even to abstruse studies (as any doctor
will witness), and requires a proportionate degree of recuperation.
I do not pretend to quote the experience (any more than the mode of
composition) of other writers—though with that of most of my brethren
and superiors in the craft I am well acquainted—but I am convinced that
to work the brain at night in the way of imagination is little short of
an act of suicide. Dr. Treichler's recent warnings upon this subject
are startling enough, even as addressed to students, but in their
application to poets and novelists they have far greater significance.
It may be said that journalists (whose writings, it is whispered, have
a close connection with fiction) always write in the 'small hours,' but
their mode of life is more or less shaped to meet their exceptional
requirements; whereas we storytellers live like other people (only more
purely), and if we consume the midnight oil, use perforce another
system of illumination also—we burn the candle at both ends. A great
novelist who adopted this baneful practice and indirectly lost his life
by it (through insomnia) notes what is very curious, that
notwithstanding his mind was so occupied, when awake, with the
creatures of his imagination, he never dreamt of them; which I think is
also the general experience. But he does not tell us for how many hours
_before_ he went to sleep, and tossed upon his restless pillow till far
into the morning, he was unable to get rid of those whom his
enchanter's wand had summoned.[8] What is even more curious than the
story-teller's never dreaming of the shadowy beings who engross so much
of his thoughts, is that (so far as my own experience goes at least)
when a story is once written and done with, no matter how forcibly it
may have interested and excited the writer during its progress, it
fades almost instantly from the mind, and leaves, by some benevolent
arrangement of nature, a _tabula rasa_—a blank space for the next one.
Everyone must recollect that anecdote of Walter Scott, who, on hearing
one of his own poems ('My hawk is tired of perch and hood') sung in a
London drawing-room, observed with innocent approbation, 'Byron's, of
course;' and so it is with us lesser folks. A very humorous sketch
might be given (and it would not be overdrawn) of some prolific
novelist getting hold, under some strange roof, of the 'library
edition' of his own stories, and perusing them with great satisfaction
and many appreciative ejaculations, such as 'Now this _is_ good;' 'I
wonder how it will end;' or 'George Eliot's, _of course_!
[8] Speaking of dreams, the composition of Khubla Khan and of one or
two other literary fragments during sleep has led to the belief that
dreams are often useful to the writer of fiction; but in my own case,
at least, I can recall but a single instance of it, nor have I ever
heard of their doing one pennyworth of good to any of my
contemporaries.
Although a good allowance of sleep is absolutely necessary for
imaginative brain work, long holidays are not so. I have noticed that
those who let their brains 'lie fallow,' as it is termed, for any
considerable time, are by no means the better for it; but, on the other
hand, some daily recreation, by which a genuine interest is excited and
maintained, is almost indispensable. It is no use to 'take up a book,'
and far less to attempt 'to refresh the machine,' as poor Sir Walter
did, by trying another kind of composition; what is needed is an
altogether new object for the intellectual energies, by which, though
they are stimulated, they shall not be strained.
Advice such as I have ventured to offer may seem 'to the general' of
small importance, but to those I am especially addressing it is worthy
of their attention, if only as the result of a personal experience
unusually prolonged; and I have nothing unfortunately but advice to
offer. To the question addressed to me with such _naïveté_ by so many
correspondents, 'How do you make your plots?' (as if they were
consulting the Cook's Oracle), I can return no answer. I don't know,
myself; they are sometimes suggested by what I hear or read, but more
commonly they suggest themselves unsought.
I once heard two popular story-tellers, A who writes seldom, but with
much ingenuity of construction, and B who is very prolific in pictures
of everyday life, discoursing on this subject.
'Your fecundity,' said A, 'astounds me; I can't think where you get
your plots from.'
'Plots?' replied B; 'oh! I don't trouble myself about _them_. To tell
you the truth, I generally take a bit of one of yours, which is amply
sufficient for my purpose.'
This was very wrong of B; and it is needless to say I do not quote his
system for imitation. A man should tell his own story without
plagiarism. As to Truth being stranger than Fiction, that is all
nonsense; it is a proverb set about by Nature to conceal her own want
of originality. I am not like that pessimist philosopher who assumed
her malignity from the fact of the obliquity of the ecliptic; but the
truth is, Nature is a pirate. She has not hesitated to plagiarise from
even so humble an individual as myself. Years after I had placed my
wicked baronet in his living tomb, she starved to death a hunter in
Mexico under precisely similar circumstances; and so late as last month
she has done the same in a forest in Styria. Nay, on my having found
occasion in a certain story ('a small thing, but my own') to get rid of
the whole wicked population of an island by suddenly submerging it in
the sea, what did Nature do? She waited for an insultingly short time
(if her idea was that the story would be forgotten), and then
reproduced the same circumstances on her own account (and without the
least acknowledgment) in the Indian seas. My attention was drawn to
both these breaches of copyright by several correspondents, but I had
no redress, the offender being beyond the jurisdiction of the Court of
Chancery.
When the story-teller has finished his task and surmounted every
obstacle to his own satisfaction, he has still a difficulty to face in
the choice of a title. He may invent indeed an eminently appropriate
one, but it is by no means certain he will be allowed to keep it. Of
course he has done his best to steer clear of that borne by any other
novel; but among the thousands that have been brought out within the
last forty years, and which have been forgotten even if they were ever
known, how can he know whether the same name has not been hit upon? He
goes to Stationers' Hall to make inquiries; but—mark the usefulness of
that institution—he finds that books are only entered there under their
authors' names. His search is therefore necessarily futile, and he has
to publish his story under the apprehension (only too well founded, as
I have good cause to know) that the High Court of Chancery will
prohibit its sale upon the ground of infringement of title.
[Illustration]