It only remains to me to speak more especially of my own vocation--the
editor's--which bears much the same relation to the author's that the
bellows-blower's bears to the organist's, the player's to the
dramatist's, Julian or Liszt to Weber or Beethoven. The editor, from
the absolute necessity of the case, can not speak deliberately; he
must write to-day of to-day's incidents and aspects, tho these may be
completely overlaid and transformed by the incidents and aspects of
to-morrow. He must write and strive in the full consciousness that
whatever honor or distinction he may acquire must perish with the
generation that bestowed them--with the thunders of applause that
greeted Kemble or Jenny Lind, with the ruffianism that expelled
Macready, or the cheerful laugh that erewhile rewarded the sallies of
Burton or Placide.[20]
[Footnote 19: Printed with the "Miscellanies" In the "Recollections of
a Busy Life."]
[Footnote 20: Henry Placide, an American actor born in Charleston, who
excelled in the parts of Sir Peter Teazle and Sir Anthony Absolute.]
No other public teacher lives so wholly in the present as the editor;
and the noblest affirmations of unpopular truth--the most
self-sacrificing defiance of a base and selfish public sentiment that
regards only the most sordid ends, and values every utterance solely
as it tends to preserve quiet and contentment, while the dollars fall
jingling into the merchant's drawer, the land-jobber's vault, and the
miser's bag--can but be noted in their day, and with their day
forgotten. It is his cue to utter silken and smooth sayings--to
condemn vice so as not to interfere with the pleasures or alarm the
conscience of the vicious--to praise and champion liberty so as not to
give annoyance or offense to slavery, and to commend and glorify labor
without attempting to expose or repress any of the gainful
contrivances by which labor is plundered and degraded. Thus sidling
dextrously between somewhere and nowhere, the able editor of the
nineteenth century may glide through life respectable and in good
ease, and lie down to his long rest with the non-achievements of his
life emblazoned on the very whitest marble, surmounting and glorifying
his dust.
There is a different and sterner path--I know not whether there be any
now qualified to tread it--I am not sure that even one has ever
followed it implicitly, in view of the certain meagerness of its
temporal rewards and the haste wherewith any fame acquired in a sphere
so thoroughly ephemeral as the editor's must be shrouded by the dark
waters of oblivion. This path demands an ear ever open to the plaints
of the wronged and the suffering, tho they can never repay advocacy,
and those who mainly support newspapers will be annoyed and often
exposed by it; a heart as sensitive to oppression and degradation in
the next street as if they were practised in Brazil or Japan; a pen as
ready to expose and reprove the crimes whereby wealth is amassed and
luxury enjoyed in our own country at this hour as if they had only
been committed by Turks or pagans in Asia some centuries ago.
Such an editor, could one be found or trained, need not expect to lead
an easy, indolent, or wholly joyous life--to be blest by archbishops
or followed by the approving shouts of ascendent majorities; but he
might find some recompense for their loss in the calm verdict of an
approving conscience; and the tears of the despised and the
friendless, preserved from utter despair by his efforts and
remonstrances, might freshen for a season the daisies that bloomed
above his grave.
Literature is a noble calling, but only when the call obeyed by the
aspirant issues from a world to be enlightened and blest, not from a
void stomach clamoring to be gratified and filled. Authorship is a
royal priesthood; but wo to him who rashly lays unhallowed hands on
the ark or the altar, professing a zeal for the welfare of the race
only that he may secure the confidence and sympathies of others, and
use them for his own selfish ends! If a man have no heroism in his
soul--no animating purpose beyond living easily and faring
sumptuously--I can imagine no greater mistake on his part than that of
resorting to authorship as a vocation. That such a one may achieve
what he regards as success I do not deny; but, if so, he does it at
greater risk and by greater exertion than would have been required to
win it in any other pursuit. No; it can not be wise in a selfish, or
sordid, or sensual man to devote himself to literature; the fearful
self-exposure incident to this way of life--the dire necessity which
constrains the author to stamp his own essential portrait on every
volume of his works, no matter how carefully he may fancy he has
erased, or how artfully he may suppose he has concealed it--this
should repel from the vestibule of the temple of fame the foot of
every profane or mocking worshiper.
But if you are sure that your impulse is not personal nor sinister,
but a desire to serve and ennoble your race, rather than to dazzle and
be served by it; that you are ready joyfully to "scorn delights, and
live laborious days," so that thereby the well-being of mankind may be
promoted--then I pray you not to believe that the world is too wise to
need further enlightenment, nor that it would be impossible for one so
humble as yourself to say aught whereby error may be dispelled or good
be diffused. Sell not your integrity; barter not your independence;
beg of no man the privilege of earning a livelihood by authorship;
since that is to degrade your faculty, and very probably to corrupt
it; but seeing through your own clear eyes, and uttering the impulses
of your own honest heart, speak or write as truth and love shall
dictate, asking no material recompense, but living by the labor of
your hands, until recompense shall be voluntarily tendered to secure
your service, and you may frankly accept it without a compromise of
your integrity or a peril to your freedom. Soldier in the long warfare
for man's rescue from darkness and evil, choose not your place on the
battle-field, but joyfully accept that assigned you; asking not
whether there be higher or lower, but only whether it is here that you
can most surely do your proper work, and meet your full share of the
responsibility and the danger.
Believe not that the heroic age is no more; since to that age is only
requisite the heroic purpose and the heroic soul. So long as ignorance
and evil shall exist so long there will be work for the devoted, and
so long will there be room in the ranks of those who, defying obloquy,
misapprehension, bigotry, and interested craft, struggle and dare for
the redemption of the world. "Of making many books there is no end,"
tho there is happily a speedy end of most books after they are made;
but he who by voice or pen strikes his best blow at the impostures and
vices whereby our race is debased and paralyzed may close his eyes in
death, consoled and cheered by the reflection that he has done what he
could for the emancipation and elevation of his kind.