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:

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.

You will doubtless find that what you most need in the beginning is to know more about words and about books. But this vacuum can be filled by earnest thought and serious application, system, and thoroughness. It takes you a long time to play a mazurka of Chopin’s well. It takes you a long time even to learn compositions less important. A young woman sits many months before a piano before she learns to drag “Home, Sweet Home!” through the eye of a needle; and then to flatten out again con expressione; and then to chase it up to the last key until it seems to be lost in a still, small protest; and then to bring it to life and send it thundering up and down, as if it were chased by lightning. How easy it all seems, and how delighted we are when our old friend, “Home, Sweet Home!” appears again in its original form! But there was a time when it was not easy—a time when the counting of one and two and three was not easy. So it is with the art of writing. It is not easy in the beginning. It may be easy to make grandiloquent similes about “prairie-grass” and the “eternal light which cheers,” etc.; but that is just like beginning to play snatches of a grand march before one knows the scales.

To begin to write well, one must cut off all the useless leaves that obscure the fruit, which is the thought, and keep the sun from it. Figures should be used sparingly. One metaphor that blazes at the climax of an article after many pages of simplicity is worth half a hundred scattered wherever they happen to fall. It is a white diamond as compared to a handful of garnets.