and thank Heaven for such dutiful and clever boys—that is, if you boys
have brought them up properly. But so many of our parents have been so
badly brought up. They really do not see how superior their children are
to them. They actually fancy that they know more of the world than a boy
of sixteen or seventeen; and they occasionally insist on being obeyed.
It would be a pleasant thing to form a new society among you—a society
for the proper bringing up of fathers and mothers. At present there are
some parents who really refuse to be the slaves of their children, or to
take their advice. This is unreasonable, I know, but it is true. Think
how frightful it is for a young man of spirit to be kept at college
during the best years of his life, when he might be learning new
clog-dance steps on street-corners or reading detective stories all day
long!
It would be hard to change things now; and the fact remains that in good
society fathers and mothers are considered before their children. The
man who lacks reverence for his parents, who shows irritation to them,
who pains them by his grumbling and fault-finding, is no gentleman. He
is what the English call a cad. He is the most contemptible of God’s
creatures. Let me sum up in the famous lines which you all ought to know
by heart; they are the words that Shakspere puts into the mouth of
Polonius when his son Laertes is about to depart into the great world:
“Give thy thoughts no _tongue_,
Nor any unproportioned _thought_ his ACT.
Be thou familiar, but by no means _vulgar_:
The friends thou hast, and their adoption TRIED,
GRAPPLE them to THY SOUL with hooks of STEEL;
But do not dull thy _palm_ with _entertainment_
Of each new-hatched, unfledged comrade. Beware
Of _entrance_ to a quarrel, but, being in,
Bear it that the opposer may BEWARE of _thee_.
Give _every_ man thine EAR, but _few_ thy VOICE;
Take _each_ man’s censure, but reserve _thy_ judgment.
Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,
But not expressed in _fancy_; rich, not _gaudy_;
For the apparel oft proclaims the MAN.
· · · · ·
Neither a borrower nor a LENDER be;
For loan oft loses both _itself_ and _friend_,
And borrowing _dulls_ the edge of husbandry.
This, above all: to thine _own_ self be TRUE;
And it must _follow_, as the night the _day_,
Thou canst not _then_ be FALSE to ANY MAN.”
V. How to Express One’s Thoughts.
Mr. Frederick Harrison, a man of letters, whose literary judgments are
as right as his philosophical judgments are wrong, tells us that the
making of many books and the reading of periodical sheets obscure the
perception and benumb the mind. “The incessant accumulation of fresh
books must hinder any real knowledge of the old; for the multiplicity of
volumes becomes a bar upon our use of any. In literature especially does
it hold that we cannot see the wood for the trees.” I am not about to
advise you to add to the number of useless leaves which hide the forms
of noble trees; but, if your resolve to write outlives the work of
preparation, you may be able to give the world a new classic, or, at
least, something that will cheer and elevate. This preparation is rigid.
Two important qualities of it must be keen observation and careful
reading. It is a pity that an old dialogue on “Eyes or No Eyes” is no
longer included in the reading-books for children. The modern
book-makers have improved it out of existence; nevertheless, it taught a
good lesson. It describes the experience of two boys on a country road.
Common things are about them,—wild flowers, weeds, a ditch,—but one
discovers many hidden things by the power of observation, while the
other sees nothing but the outside of the common things. To write well
one must have eyes and see. To be observant it is not necessary that one
should be critical in the sense of fault-finding. Keen observation and
charitable toleration ought to go together. We may see the peculiarities
of those around us and be amused by them; but we shall never be able to
write anything about character worth writing unless we go deeper and
pierce through the crust which hides from us the hidden meanings of
life. How tired would we become of Dickens if he had confined himself to
pictures of surface characteristics! If we weary of him, it is because
Mr. Samuel Weller is so constantly dropping his _w_’s, and Sairey Gamp
so constantly talking of Mrs. Harris. If we find interest and
refreshment in him now, it is because he went deeper than the thousand
and one little habits with which he distinguishes his personages.
To write, then, we must acquire the art of observing in a broad and
intelligent spirit. Nature will hang the East and West with gorgeous
tapestry in vain if we do not see it. And many times we shall judge
rashly and harshly if we do not learn to detect the trueheartedness that
hides behind the face which seems cold to the unobservant. We are indeed
blind when we fail to know that an angel has passed until another has
told us of his passing.
Apparently there is not much to think of the wrinkled hand of the old
woman who crosses your path in the street. You catch a glimpse of it as
she carries her bundle in that hand on her way from work in the
twilight. Perhaps you pass on and think of it no more. Perhaps you note
the knotted, purple veins standing out from the toil-reddened surface,
and then your eyes catch at a glance the wrinkled face on which are
written the traces of trials, self-sacrifice, and patience. It is hard
to believe that those hands were once soft and dimpled childish hands,
and that face bright with happy smiles. The story of her life is the
story of many lives from day to day. Those coarse, ungloved, wrinkled
hands will seem vulgar to you only if you have never learned to observe
and think. They may suggest a noble story or poem to you, if you take
their meaning rightly. Life, every-day life, is full of the suggestions
of great things for those who have learned to look and to observe.
Mr. Harrison, from whom I have quoted already, puts his finger on a
fault which must inevitably destroy all power of good literary
production. It is a common fault, and the antidote for it is the
cultivation of the art of careful reading. “A habit of reading idly,”
Mr. Harrison says, “debilitates and corrupts the mind for all wholesome
reading; the habit of reading wisely is one of the most difficult to
acquire, needing strong resolution and infinite pains; and reading for
mere reading’s sake, instead of for the sake of the good we gain from
reading, is one of the worst and commonest and most unwholesome habits
we have.”
In order to write well, one must read well—one must read a few good
books—and never idle over newspapers. Newspapers have become
necessities, and grow larger each year. But the larger they are the more
deleterious they are. The modern newspaper lies one day and corrects its
lies, adding, however, a batch of new ones, on the day after. There are
a few newspapers which have literary value, though even they, mirroring
the passing day, have some of its faults. As a rule, avoid newspapers.
They will help you to fritter away precious time; they will spoil your
style in the same way that a slovenly talker, with whom you associate
constantly, will spoil your talk; for newspapers are generally written
in a hurry, and hurried literary work, unless by a master-hand, is never
good work. Nevertheless, in our country, the newspapers absorb a great
quantity of literary matter which would, were there no newspapers, never
see the light.
Literature considered as a profession includes what is known as
journalism,—not perhaps reportorial work, but the writing of leaders,
book reviews, theatrical notices, and other articles which require a
light touch, tact, and careful practice, but which do not always have
those qualities. A writer lately said: “Literature has become a trade,
and finance a profession.” This is hardly true; but some authors have
come to look on their profession as a trade, and to value it principally
for the money it brings. Anthony Trollope, for instance, whose novels
are still popular, set himself to his work as to a task; he wrote so
many words for so much money daily. This may account for the woodenness
of his literary productions. In the pursuit of art, money should not be
the first consideration, although it should not be left entirely out of
consideration; for the artist should live by his art, the musician by
his music, and the author by his books. Literature, then, should be a
vocation as well as an avocation.
Literature, in spite of the many stories about the poverty of writers,
has, in our English-speaking countries, been on the whole a fairly
well-paid profession. Chaucer was by no means a pauper; Shakspere
retired at a comparatively early age to houses and lands earned by his
pen in the pleasant town of Stratford. Pope earned nearly fifty thousand
dollars by his translations or, rather, paraphrases of Homer. Goldsmith,
though always poor through his own generosity and extravagance, earned
what in our days would be held to be a handsome competence. Sir Walter
Scott made enormous sums which he spent royally on his magnificent
castle of Abbotsford. Charles Dickens earned enough to make him rich,
and our modern writers, though less in genius, are not less in their
power of securing the hire of which they are more than worthy. Mr.
Howells has had at least ten thousand dollars a year for permitting his
serial stories to be printed in the publications of Harper & Brothers.
Mr. Will Carleton, the author of “Farm Ballads,” has no doubt an equal
amount from his copyrights. Mrs. Hodgson Burnett, the author of “Little
Lord Fauntleroy,” easily commands eight thousand dollars for the
copyright of a novel. So you see that the picture often presented to us
of the haggard author shivering over his tallow candle in a garret is
somewhat exaggerated.
But none of these authors attained success without long care given to
art. They all had their early struggles. Mrs. Burnett, for instance, was
a very brave and hard-working young girl; she was poor; her only hope in
life was her education; she used it to advantage and by constant
practice in literary work. The means of her success was the capacity for
taking pains. It is the means of all success in life. And any man or
woman who expects to adopt literature as a profession must _see well,
read well, and take infinite pains_. Probably Mr. Howells and Mrs.
Burnett had many MSS. rejected by the editors. Probably, like many young
authors, each day brought back an article which had cost them many weary
hours,—for literary work is the most nerve-wearying and brain-wearying
of all work—with the legend, “Returned with thanks.” Still they kept on
taking infinite pains.
Lord Byron awoke one morning and found himself famous. But that first
morning of fame had cost much study, much thought, and, no doubt,
periods of despondency in which he almost resolved not to write at all.
Poetry does not gush from the poet, like fire out of a Roman candle when
you light it. Of all species of literary composition, poetry requires
more exquisite care than any other. A sonnet which has not been written
and rewritten twenty times may be esteemed as worthless. To-day no
modern poem has a right to be printed unless it be technically perfect.
It seems a sacrilege to speak of poetry as a profession; it ought to be
a vocation only, and the poet ought not only to be made by infinite
pains taken with himself, but born. As to the rewards of extreme
fineness in the expression of poetry, I have heard that Longfellow
received one thousand dollars for his comparatively short poem of
“Keramos,” and that Tennyson had a guinea a line. But we shall leave out
poetry in talking of filthy lucre, and consider literature as
represented by journalism, in which there is very little poetry.
I did not intend to touch on journalism, as the work of making
newspapers is sometimes called, but I have been lately asked to give my
opinion as to whether journalism is a good preparation for the pursuit
of literature. Perhaps the best way to do this would be to give the
experiences of a young journalist first.
I imagine a young person who had written at least twenty compositions;
some on “Gratitude,” one on “Ambition,” one on “The History of a Pin,”
and a grand poem on the Southern Confederacy in five cantos. He had been
prepared for the pursuit of literature by being made to write a
composition every Friday. These compositions were read aloud in his
class. What beautiful sentiments were uttered on those Fridays! How
everybody thrilled when young Strephon compared Ireland to “that
prairie-grass which smells sweeter the more it is trodden on”! He had
never seen such grass; he would not have recognized it if he had seen
it; but he had read about it, and when a cruel scientific instructor
asked him to give the botanical name, he turned away in disgust. His
finest feelings were outraged. This, however, did not prevent the simile
of the prairie-grass of unknown genus from cantering through all the
compositions of the other members of the class for many succeeding
weeks, until the professor got into a habit of asking, when a boy rose
to read his essay: “Is there prairie-grass in it?” If the essayist said
yes, he was made to sit down and severely reprimanded. Teachers were
very cruel in those days.
There was another lovely simile ruthlessly cut down in its middle
age—pardon me if I digress and pour out my wrongs to you; I know you can
appreciate them. A boy of genius once said that “Charity, like an
eternal flame, cheers, but not inebriates.” After that inspired
utterance, charity, like an eternal flame, cheered, but not inebriated,
the composition of every other writer, until the same cruel hand put it
out. In those days we knew a good thing when we saw it, and, if it saved
trouble, we appreciated it.
Somewhat later the young person attained a position in the office of an
illustrated paper. It was a newspaper which was so fearful that its
foreign letters should be incorrect that it always had them written at
home. The young gentleman whose desk was next to that of your obedient
servant wrote the Paris, Dublin, and New York letters. The correspondent
from Rome and Constantinople, who also did the market reports at home,
had some trouble with his spelling occasionally, and made a very old
gentleman in the corner indignant by asking him whether “pecuniary” was
spelled with a “c” or a “q,” and similar questions. This old gentleman
wrote the fashion column, and signed himself “Mabel Evangeline.” He
sometimes made mistakes about the fashions, but they were very naturally
blamed on the printers. To your obedient servant fell the agricultural
and the religious columns. All went well, for the prairie-grass was kept
out of the agricultural column, though some strange things went in—all
went well until he copied out of a paper a receipt for making hens lay.
He did not know then that it was a comic paper, and that the friend who
wrote it was only in fun. The hens of several subscribers lay down and
died. There was trouble in the office, and the agricultural department
was taken from him and given to “Mabel Evangeline,” who later came to
grief by describing an immense peanut-tree which was said to grow in
Massachusetts.
Your obedient servant was asked to write leaders on current subjects.
How joyfully he went to work! Here was a chance to introduce the
prairie-grass and the “eternal flame.” With a happy face he took his
“copy” to the managing editor. Why did that great man frown as he read:
“If we compare Dante with Milton, we find that the great Florentine sage
was like that prairie-grass which—” “Do you call this a current
subject?” he demanded. “It will not do. Where’s the other one?” Your
obedient servant, in fear and trembling, gave him the other slips. He
began: “The geocentric movement, like that eternal flame which cheers,
but—” He paused. “When I asked,” he said, in an awful voice—“when I
asked you for current subjects, I wanted an editorial on the fight in
the Fourth Ward and a paragraph on the sudden rise in lard. Do you
understand?”
Dante and the geocentric movement, the prairie-grass and the eternal
flame were crushed. The wise young person learned to adapt himself to
the ways of newspaper offices, and all went well again, until he
attempted high art. This newspaper was young and not very rich;
therefore economy had to be used in the matter of illustrations. The
great man, its editor, had a habit of buying second-hand
pictures—perhaps it was not to save money, but because he loved the old
masters,—and it became the duty of the present writer, who was then a
young person, and who is now your obedient servant, to write articles to
suit the pictures. For instance, if a scene in Madrid had been bought,
the present writer wrote about Madrid. It was easy, for he had an
encyclopædia in the office; but if anybody had borrowed the volume
containing “M” we always called Madrid by some other name, for “Mabel
Evangeline,” who said he had travelled, said foreign cities looked
pretty much alike. “Mabel Evangeline,” who sometimes, I am afraid, drank
too much beer and mixed up things, was not to be relied on, for he put
in a picture of Rome, N. Y., for Rome, Italy, and brought the paper into
contempt. Still, I think this would not have made so much difference, if
he had not labelled a picture of an actress in a very big hat and a very
low-cut gown, “Home from a convent school.” He was discharged after
this, and the present writer asked to perform his functions. Nothing
unpleasant would have happened, if a picture had not been sent in one
day in a hurry. It was a dim picture. It seemed to represent a tall
woman and a ghost. The present writer named it “Lady Macbeth and the
Ghost of Banquo,” and spun out a graphic description of the artist’s
meaning. Next day when the paper came out, the picture was “The Goddess
of Liberty crowning Abraham Lincoln.”
It was a mistake; but who does not make mistakes? Who ever saw the
Goddess of Liberty, anyhow? If you heard the way that editor talked to
the promising young journalist, you would have thought he was personally
acquainted with both Lady Macbeth and the Goddess of Liberty, and that
they had not succeeded in teaching him good manners. It is sad to think
that mere trifles will often cause thoughtless people to lose their
tempers.
The writing for newspapers is a good introduction to the profession of
literature, if the aspirant can study, can read good books when not at
work, can still take pains in spite of haste, and cultivate accuracy of
practice. The best way to learn to write is to write. One engaged in
supplying newspapers with “copy” _must_ write. If he can keep a strict
eye on his style—if he can avoid slang, “smart” colloquialism, he will
find that the necessity for conciseness and the little time allowed for
hunting for the right word for the right place will help him in
attaining ease and aptness of expression.
The first difficulty the unpractised writer has to overcome is a lack of
the right words. Words are repeated, and other words that are wanted to
express some nice distinction of meaning will not come. Constant
reference to a good dictionary or a book of synonyms is the surest
remedy for this; and if the writer will refuse to use any word that does
not express _exactly_ what he means, he will make steady advance in the
power of expression. Words that burn do not come at first. They are
sought and found. Tennyson, old as he was, polished his early poems,
hoping to make them perfect before he died. Pope’s lines, which seem so
easy, so smooth, which seem to say in three or four words what we have
been trying to say all our lives in ten or eleven, were turned and
re-turned, carved and re-carved, cut and re-cut with all the
scrupulousness of a sculptor curving a Grecian nose on his statue:
“A little learning is a dangerous thing;
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring.”
That is easy reading. It seems as easy as making an egg stand on end, or
as putting an apple into a dumpling—when you know how. It is easy
because it was so hard; it is easy because Pope took infinite pains to
make it so. Had he put less labor into it, he would have failed to make
it live. It is true that a thing is worth just as much as we put into
it.
Although the desire to write is often kindled by much reading, the power
of writing is often paralyzed by the discovery that the reading has been
of the wrong kind. Again, the tyro who has read little and that little
unsystematically is tempted to lay down his pen in despair. Lord Bacon
said that “reading maketh a full man, writing a ready man;” from which
we may conclude that he who reads may best utilize his stock of
knowledge by learning to write. But he must first read, no matter how
keen his observation may be or how original his thoughts are; for a good
style does not come by nature. It must be the expression of temperament
as well as thought; but it must have acquired clearness and elegance,
which are due to the construction of sentences in the good company of
great authors. To write, you must read, and be careful what you read;
and you must read critically. To read a play of Shakspere’s only for the
story is to degrade Shakspere to the level of the railway novel. It is
better to have read the trial scene in “The Merchant of Venice”
critically, missing no shade in Portia’s character or speech, no
expression of Shylock’s, than to have read all Shakspere carelessly. To
make a specialty of literature, one must be, above all, thorough. The
writings that live have a thousand fine points in them unseen of the
casual reader, and, like the carvings mentioned in Miss Donnelly’s fine
poem, “Unseen, yet Seen,” known only to God. Take ten lines of any great
writer, examine them closely with the aid of all the critical power you
have, and then you will see that simplicity in literature is produced by
the art which conceals art. That style which is easiest to read is the
hardest to write. Genius has been defined as the capacity for taking
infinite pains.
There is a passage in “Ben Hur” which seems to me particularly
applicable to our subject. You remember, in the chariot-race, where Ben
Hur’s cruel experience in the galleys serves him so well. He would not
have had the strength of hand or the steadiness of posture, were it not
for the work with the oars and the constant necessity of standing on a
deck which was even more unsteady than the swaying chariot. “All
experience,” says the author, “is useful.” This is especially true for
the writer. One can hardly write a page without feeling how little one
knows; and if the great aim of knowledge be to attain that
consciousness, the writer sooner attains it than other men.
Everything, from the pink tinge in a seashell to the varying tints of an
approaching thunder-cloud, from an old farmer’s talk of crops and
weather to your lesson in geology and astronomy, will help you. Do not
imagine that science and literature are opponents. For myself, I would
not permit anybody who did not know at least the rudiments of botany and
geology to begin the serious study of literature. If Coleridge felt the
need of attending a series of geological lectures late in life, in order
to add to his power of making new metaphors and similes, how much
greater is our necessity for adding to our knowledge of the phenomena of
nature, that we may use our knowledge to the greater glory of God!
Literature is the reflection of life, and literature ought to be the
crystallization of all knowledge.