TREPIDATIONS--SUBTLE PRINCIPLE--PERVERSE IMAGINATION--ARE THEY
MINE?--ANOTHER BOOK--HOW HARD!--AGRICULTURAL DINNER--INCOMPREHENSIBLE
ACTIONS--INMOST BOSOM--GIVE IT UP--RASCALLY NEWSPAPER
'An author,' said I, addressing my host; 'is it possible that I am under
the roof of an author?'
'Yes,' said my host, sighing, 'my name is so and so, and I am the author
of so and so; it is more than probable that you have heard both of my
name and works. I will not detain you much longer with my history; the
night is advancing, and the storm appears to be upon the increase. My
life since the period of my becoming an author may be summed briefly as
an almost uninterrupted series of doubts, anxieties, and trepidations. I
see clearly that it is not good to love anything immoderately in this
world, but it has been my misfortune to love immoderately everything on
which I have set my heart. This is not good, I repeat--but where is the
remedy? The ancients were always in the habit of saying, "Practise
moderation," but the ancients appear to have considered only one portion
of the subject. It is very possible to practise moderation in some
things, in drink and the like--to restrain the appetites--but can a man
restrain the affections of his mind, and tell them, so far you shall go,
and no farther? Alas, no! for the mind is a subtle principle, and cannot
be confined. The winds may be imprisoned; Homer says that Odysseus
carried certain winds in his ship, confined in leathern bags, but Homer
never speaks of confining the affections. It were but right that those
who exhort us against inordinate affections, and setting our hearts too
much upon the world and its vanities, would tell us how to avoid doing
so.
'I need scarcely tell you that no sooner did I become an author than I
gave myself up immoderately to my vocation. It became my idol, and, as a
necessary consequence, it has proved a source of misery and disquietude
to me, instead of pleasure and blessing. I had trouble enough in writing
my first work, and I was not long in discovering that it was one thing to
write a stirring and spirited address to a set of county electors, and
another widely different to produce a work at all calculated to make an
impression upon the great world. I felt, however, that I was in my
proper sphere, and by dint of unwearied diligence and exertion I
succeeded in evolving from the depths of my agitated breast a work which,
though it did not exactly please me, I thought would serve to make an
experiment upon the public; so I laid it before the public, and the
reception which it met with was far beyond my wildest expectations. The
public were delighted with it, but what were my feelings? Anything,
alas! but those of delight. No sooner did the public express its
satisfaction at the result of my endeavours, than my perverse imagination
began to conceive a thousand chimerical doubts; forthwith I sat down to
analyse it; and my worst enemy, and all people have their enemies,
especially authors--my worst enemy could not have discovered or sought to
discover a tenth part of the faults which I, the author and creator of
the unfortunate production, found or sought to find in it. It has been
said that love makes us blind to the faults of the loved object--common
love does, perhaps--the love of a father to his child, or that of a lover
to his mistress, but not the inordinate love of an author to his works,
at least not the love which one like myself bears to his works: to be
brief, I discovered a thousand faults in my work, which neither public
nor critics discovered. However, I was beginning to get over this
misery, and to forgive my work all its imperfections, when--and I shake
when I mention it--the same kind of idea which perplexed me with regard
to the hawks and the gipsy pony rushed into my mind, and I forthwith
commenced touching the objects around me, in order to baffle the evil
chance, as you call it; it was neither more nor less than a doubt of the
legality of my claim to the thoughts, expressions, and situations
contained in the book; that is, to all that constituted the book. How
did I get them? How did they come into my mind? Did I invent them? Did
they originate with myself? Are they my own, or are they some other
body's? You see into what difficulty I had got; I won't trouble you by
relating all that I endured at that time, but will merely say that after
eating my own heart, as the Italians say, and touching every object that
came in my way for six months, I at length flung my book, I mean the copy
of it which I possessed, into the fire, and began another.
'But it was all in vain; I laboured at this other, finished it, and gave
it to the world; and no sooner had I done so, than the same thought was
busy in my brain, poisoning all the pleasure which I should otherwise
have derived from my work. How did I get all the matter which composed
it? Out of my own mind, unquestionably; but how did it come there--was
it the indigenous growth of the mind? And then I would sit down and
ponder over the various scenes and adventures in my book, endeavouring to
ascertain how I came originally to devise them, and by dint of reflecting
I remembered that to a single word in conversation, or some simple
accident in a street or on a road, I was indebted for some of the
happiest portions of my work; they were but tiny seeds, it is true, which
in the soil of my imagination had subsequently become stately trees, but
I reflected that without them no stately trees would have been produced,
and that, consequently, only a part in the merit of these compositions
which charmed the world--for they did charm the world--was due to myself.
Thus, a dead fly was in my phial, poisoning all the pleasure which I
should otherwise have derived from the result of my brain-sweat. "How
hard!" I would exclaim, looking up to the sky, "how hard! I am like
Virgil's sheep, bearing fleeces not for themselves." But, not to tire
you, it fared with my second work as it did with my first; I flung it
aside, and, in order to forget it, I began a third, on which I am now
occupied; but the difficulty of writing it is immense, my extreme desire
to be original sadly cramping the powers of my mind; my fastidiousness
being so great that I invariably reject whatever ideas I do not think to
be legitimately my own. But there is one circumstance to which I cannot
help alluding here, as it serves to show what miseries this love of
originality must needs bring upon an author. I am constantly discovering
that, however original I may wish to be, I am continually producing the
same things which other people say or write. Whenever, after producing
something which gives me perfect satisfaction, and which has cost me
perhaps days and nights of brooding, I chance to take up a book for the
sake of a little relaxation, a book which I never saw before, I am sure
to find in it something more or less resembling some part of what I have
been just composing. You will easily conceive the distress which then
comes over me; 'tis then that I am almost tempted to execrate the chance
which, by discovering my latent powers, induced me to adopt a profession
of such anxiety and misery.
'For some time past I have given up reading almost entirely, owing to the
dread which I entertain of lighting upon something similar to what I
myself have written. I scarcely ever transgress without having almost
instant reason to repent. To-day, when I took up the newspaper, I saw in
a speech of the Duke of Rhododendron, at an agricultural dinner, the very
same ideas, and almost the same expressions which I had put into the
mouth of an imaginary personage of mine, on a widely different occasion;
you saw how I dashed the newspaper down--you saw how I touched the floor;
the touch was to baffle the evil chance, to prevent the critics detecting
any similarity between the speech of the Duke of Rhododendron at the
agricultural dinner and the speech of my personage. My sensibility on
the subject of my writings is so great that sometimes a chance word is
sufficient to unman me, I apply it to them in a superstitious sense; for
example, when you said some time ago that the dark hour was coming on, I
applied it to my works--it appeared to bode them evil fortune; you saw
how I touched, it was to baffle the evil chance; but I do not confine
myself to touching when the fear of the evil chance is upon me. To
baffle it I occasionally perform actions which must appear highly
incomprehensible; I have been known, when riding in company with other
people, to leave the direct road, and make a long circuit by a miry lane
to the place to which we were going. I have also been seen attempting to
ride across a morass, where I had no business whatever, and in which my
horse finally sank up to its saddle-girths, and was only extricated by
the help of a multitude of hands. I have, of course, frequently been
asked the reason of such conduct, to which I have invariably returned no
answer, for I scorn duplicity; whereupon people have looked mysteriously,
and sometimes put their fingers to their foreheads. "And yet it can't
be," I once heard an old gentleman say; "don't we know what he is capable
of?" and the old man was right; I merely did these things to avoid the
evil chance, impelled by the strange feeling within me; and this evil
chance is invariably connected with my writings, the only things at
present which render life valuable to me. If I touch various objects,
and ride into miry places, it is to baffle any mischance befalling me as
an author, to prevent my books getting into disrepute; in nine cases out
of ten to prevent any expressions, thoughts, or situations in any work
which I am writing from resembling the thoughts, expressions, and
situations of other authors, for my great wish, as I told you before, is
to be original.
'I have now related my history, and have revealed to you the secrets of
my inmost bosom. I should certainly not have spoken so unreservedly as I
have done, had I not discovered in you a kindred spirit. I have long
wished for an opportunity of discoursing on the point which forms the
peculiar feature of my history with a being who could understand me; and
truly it was a lucky chance which brought you to these parts; you who
seem to be acquainted with all things strange and singular, and who are
as well acquainted with the subject of the magic touch as with all that
relates to the star Jupiter or the mysterious tree at Upsal.'
Such was the story which my host related to me in the library, amidst the
darkness, occasionally broken by flashes of lightning. Both of us
remained silent for some time after it was concluded.
'It is a singular story,' said I, at last, 'though I confess that I was
prepared for some part of it. Will you permit me to ask you a question?'
'Certainly,' said my host.
'Did you never speak in public?' said I.
'Never.'
'And when you made this speech of yours in the dining-room, commencing
with Mr. Speaker, no one was present?'
'None in the world, I double-locked the door; what do you mean?'
'An idea came into my head--dear me how the rain is pouring--but, with
respect to your present troubles and anxieties, would it not be wise,
seeing that authorship causes you so much trouble and anxiety, to give it
up altogether?'
'Were you an author yourself,' replied my host, 'you would not talk in
this manner; once an author, ever an author--besides, what could I do?
return to my former state of vegetation? no, much as I endure, I do not
wish that; besides, every now and then my reason tells me that these
troubles and anxieties of mine are utterly without foundation; that
whatever I write is the legitimate growth of my own mind, and that it is
the height of folly to afflict myself at any chance resemblance between
my own thoughts and those of other writers, such resemblance being
inevitable from the fact of our common human origin. In short--'
'I understand you,' said I; 'notwithstanding your troubles and anxieties
you find life very tolerable; has your originality ever been called in
question?'
'On the contrary, every one declares that originality constitutes the
most remarkable feature of my writings; the man has some faults, they
say, but want of originality is certainly not one of them. He is quite
different from others--a certain newspaper, it is true, the --- I think,
once insinuated that in a certain work of mine I had taken a hint or two
from the writings of a couple of authors which it mentioned; it happened,
however, that I had never even read one syllable of the writings of
either, and of one of them had never even heard the name; so much for the
discrimination of the ---. By the bye, what a rascally newspaper that
is!'
'A very rascally newspaper,' said I.