late years about young writers, shows them in a very different aspect. No
garretteers, these novelists and journalists awaiting their promotion.
They eat--and entertain their critics--at fashionable restaurants; they
are seen in expensive seats at the theatre; they inhabit handsome
flats--photographed for an illustrated paper on the first excuse. At the
worst, they belong to a reputable club, and have garments which permit
them to attend a garden party or an evening "at home" without attracting
unpleasant notice. Many biographical sketches have I read, during the
last decade, making personal introduction of young Mr. This or young Miss
That, whose book was--as the sweet language of the day will have
it--"booming"; but never one in which there was a hint of stern struggle,
of the pinched stomach and frozen fingers. I surmise that the path of
"literature" is being made too easy. Doubtless it is a rare thing
nowadays for a lad whose education ranks him with the upper middle class
to find himself utterly without resources, should he wish to devote
himself to the profession of letters. And there is the root of the
matter; writing has come to be recognized as a profession, almost as cut-
and-dried as church or law; a lad may go into it with full parental
approval, with ready avuncular support. I heard not long ago of an
eminent lawyer, who had paid a couple of hundred per annum for his son's
instruction in the art of fiction--yea, the art of fiction--by a not very
brilliant professor of that art. Really, when one comes to think of it,
an astonishing fact, a fact vastly significant. Starvation, it is true,
does not necessarily produce fine literature; but one feels uneasy about
these carpet-authors. To the two or three who have a measure of
conscience and vision, I could wish, as the best thing, some calamity
which would leave them friendless in the streets. They would perish,
perhaps. But set that possibility against the all but certainty of their
present prospect--fatty degeneration of the soul; and is it not
acceptable?