An American editor has asked me to say how a literary reputation is formed. It is like asking one how wood is turned into gold, or how real diamonds can be manufactured. If I knew the answer, it is not in the pages of a review that I should print it. I should bury myself in a cottage in the woods, exercise my secret arts, and wait for Fame to turn her trumpet into a hunting-horn, and wake the forest-echoes with my praises. In one of Mr. Stockton's stories a princess sets all the wise men of her dominions searching for the lost secret of what root-beer should be made of. The philosophers fail to discover it, and the magicians exhaust their arts in vain. Not the slightest light is thrown on the abstruse problem, until at last an old woman is persuaded to reveal that it ought to be made of roots. In the same way, the only quite obvious answer to the query, How should a literary reputation be formed? is to reply, By thinking nothing at all about reputation, but by writing earnestly and carefully on the subjects and in the style most congenial to your habits of mind. But this is too obvious, and leads to no further result. Besides, I see that the question is not, how should be, but how is, a literary reputation formed. I will endeavour, then, to give expression to such observations as I may have formed on this latter subject.

A literary reputation, as here intended, is obviously not the eternal fame of a Shakespeare, which appears likely to last for ever, nor even that of a Dickens, which must endure till there comes a complete revolution of taste, but the inferior form of repute which is enjoyed by some dozens of literary people in each generation, and makes a centre for the admiration or envy of the more enthusiastic or idler portion of their contemporaries. There is as much cant in denying the attractiveness of such temporary glory as there is in exaggerating its weight and importance. To stimulate the minds of those who surround him, to captivate their attention and excite their curiosity, is pleasing to the natural man. We look with suspicion on the author who protests too loudly that he does not care whether he is admired or not. We shrewdly surmise that inwardly he cares very much indeed. This instinctive wish for reputation is one of the great incentives to literary exertion.

Fame and money—these are the two chief spurs which drive the author on. The statement may sound ignoble, and the writers of every generation persist in avowing that they write only to amuse themselves and to do good in their generation. The noble lady in Lothair wished that she might never eat, or if at all, only a little fruit by moonlight on a bank. She, nevertheless, was always punctual at her dinner; and the author who protests his utter indifference to money and reputation is commonly excessively sensitive when an attack is made on his claims in either direction. Literary reputation is relative, of course. There may be a village fame which does not burn very brightly in the country town, and provincial stars that look very pale in a great city. The circumstances, however, under which all the various degrees of fame are reached, are, I think, closely analogous, and what is true of the local celebrity is true, relatively, of a Victor Hugo or of a Tennyson. The importance of the reputation is shown by the expanse of the area it covers, not by the curve of its advance. The circle of a great man's fame is extremely wide, but it only repeats on a vast scale the phenomena attending on the fame of a small man.

The three principal ways in which a literary reputation is formed appear to be these: reviews, private conversation among the leaders of opinion, and the instinctive attraction which leads the general public to discover for itself what is calculated to give it pleasure. I will briefly indicate the manner in which these three seem to act at the present moment on the formation of notoriety and its attendant success, in the case of English authors. First of all, it is not unworthy of note that reputation, or fame, and monetary success, are not identical, although the latter is frequently the satellite of the former. One extraordinary example of their occasional remoteness, which may be mentioned without impertinence on the authority of the author himself, is the position of Mr. Herbert Spencer. In any list of living Englishmen eminently distinguished for the originality and importance of their books, Mr. Spencer cannot fail to be ranked high. Yet, as every student of his later work knows, he stated in the preface of one of those bald and inexpensive volumes in which he enshrines his thought, that up to a comparatively recent date the sale of his books did not cover the cost of their publication. This was the case of a man famous, it is not too much to say, in every civilised country in the globe.

In pure literature there is probably no second existing instance so flagrant as this. But, to take only a few of the most illustrious Englishmen of letters, it is matter of common notoriety that the sale of the books of, say, Mr. Swinburne and Mr. Leslie Stephen, the Bishop of Oxford (Dr. Stubbs) and Mr. Lecky, considerable as it may now have become, for a long time by no means responded to the lofty rank which each of these authors has taken in the esteem of educated people throughout the Anglo-Saxon world. The reverse is still more curious and unaccountable. Why is it that there are writers of no merit at all, who sell their books in thousands where people of genius sell theirs in scores, yet without ever making a reputation? At the time when Tupper was far more popular than Tennyson, and Eliza Cook enjoyed ten times the commercial success of Browning, even the votaries of these poetasters did not claim a higher place for them, or even a high place at all. They bought their books because they liked them, but the buyers evidently did not imagine that purchase gave their temporary favourites any rank in the hierarchy of fame. These things are a mystery, but the distinction between commercial success and fame is one which must be drawn. We are speaking here of reputation, whether attended by vast sales or only by barren honour.

Reviews have no longer the power which they enjoyed seventy years ago, of making or even of marring the fortunes of a book. When there existed hundreds of private book clubs throughout the country, each one of which proceeded to buy a copy of whatever the Edinburgh recommended, then the reviewer was a great personage in the land. We may see in Lockhart's Life of Scott that Sir Walter, even at the height of his success, and when, as Ellis said, he was "the greatest elephant in the world" except himself, was seriously agitated by Jeffrey's cold review of Marmion, not through irritable peevishness, which was wholly foreign to Scott's magnanimous nature, but because a slighting review was enough to cripple a book, and a slashing review to destroy it. There is nothing of this kind now. No newspaper exists in Great Britain which is able to sell an edition of a book by praising it. I doubt if any review, under the most favourable circumstances and coming from the most influential quarter, causes two hundred copies of a book to be bought. A signed article by Mr. Gladstone is, of course, an exception; yet some have doubted of late whether a book may not be found so inept and so heavy as not to stir even at the summons of that voice.

The reviews in the professional literary papers are still understood to be useful in the case of unknown writers. A young author without a friend, if he has merit, and above all if he has striking originality, is almost sure to attract the notice of some beneficent reviewer, and be praised in the columns of one or other of the leading weeklies. These are the circumstances under which the native kindliness of the irritable race is displayed most freely. The envy which sees merit in a new man and determines to crush it with silence or malignant attack, is inhuman, and practically, I fancy, scarcely exists. The entirely unheard-of writer wounds no susceptibilities, awakens no suspicions, and even excites a pleasurable warmth of patronage. It is a little later on, when the new man is quite new no longer, but is becoming a formidable rival, that evil passions are aroused, or sometimes seem to have been aroused, in pure literary bosoms. The most sincere reviews are often those which treat the works of unknown writers, and this is perhaps the reason why the shrewd public still permits itself to be moved by these when they are strongly favourable. At any rate, every new-comer must be introduced to our crowded public to be observed at all, and to new-comers the review is still the indispensable master of the ceremonies.

But the power of reviews to create this form of literary reputation has of late been greatly circumscribed. The public grows less and less the dupe of an anonymous judgment, expressed in the columns of one of the too-numerous organs of public opinion. A more naÏve generation than ours was overawed by the nameless authority which moved behind a review. Ours, on the contrary, is apt to go too far, and pay no notice, because it does not know the name of a writer. The author who writhed under the humiliation of attack in a famous paper, little suspected that his critic was one Snooks, an inglorious creature whose acquaintance with the matter under discussion was mainly taken from the book he was reviewing. But, on the other hand, there is that story of the writer of some compendium of Greek history severely handled anonymously by the AthenÆum, whose scorn of the nameless critic gave way to horror and shame when he discovered him to have been no other than Mr. Grote. On the whole, when we consider the careful, learned, and judicial reviews which are still to be found, like grains of salt, in the vast body of insipid criticism in the newspapers, it may be held that the public pays less attention to the reviews than it should. The fact seems to remain that, except in the case of entirely unknown writers, periodical criticism possesses an ever-dwindling power of recommendation.

It is in conversation that the fame of the best books is made. There are certain men and women in London who are on the outlook for new merit, who are supposed to be hard to please, and whose praise is like rubies. It is those people who, in the smoking-room of the club, or across the dinner-table, create the fame of writers and the success of new books. "Seen Polyanthus?" says one of these peripatetic oracles. "No," you answer; "I am afraid I don't know what Polyanthus is." "Well, it's not half bad; it's this new realistic romance." "Indeed! By whom is it written?" "Oh! a fellow called—called Binks, I think—Binks or Bunks; quite a new man. You ought to see it, don't you know." Some one far down the table ventures to say, "Oh! I think it was the Palladium said on Saturday that it wasn't a good book at all, awfully abnormal, or something of that kind." "Well, you look at it; I think you'll agree with me that it's not half bad." Such a conversation as this, if held in a fructifying spot among the best people, does Polyanthus more good than a favourable review. It excites curiosity, and echoes of the praise ("not half bad" is at the present moment the most fulsome of existing expressions of London enthusiasm) reverberate and reverberate until the fortune of the book is made. At the same time, be it for ever remembered, there must be in Polyanthus the genuine force and merit which appeal to an impartial judge and convert reader after reader, or else vainly does the friendly oracle try to raise the wind. He betrays himself, most likely, by using the expression, "a very fine book," or "beautifully written." These phrases have a falsetto air, and lack the persuasive sincerity of the true modern eulogium, "not half bad."

But there are reputations formed in other places than in London dining-rooms and the libraries of clubs. There are certain books which are not welcomed by the reviews, and which fail to please or even to meet the eye of experts in literature, which nevertheless, by some strange and unaccountable attraction, become known to the outer public, and are eagerly accepted by a very wide circle of readers. I am not aware that the late Mr. Roe was ever a favourite with the writing or speaking critics of America. He achieved his extraordinary success not by the aid, but in spite of the neglect and disapproval of the lettered classes. I have no close acquaintance with Mr. Roe's novels, but I know them well enough to despair of discovering why they were found to be so eminently welcome to thousands of readers. So far as I have examined them, they have appeared to me to be—if I may speak frankly—neither good enough nor bad enough to account for their popularity. It is not that I am such a prig as to disdain Mr. Roe's honourable industry; far from it. But his books are lukewarm; they have neither the heat of a rich insight into character, nor the deathly coldness of false or insincere fiction. They are not ill-constructed, although they certainly are not well-constructed. It is their lack of salient character that makes me wonder what enabled them to float where scores and scores of works not appreciably worse or better than they have sunk.

Most countries possess at any given moment an author of this class. In England we have the lady who signs her eminently reputable novels by the pseudonym of "Edna Lyall." I do not propose to say what the lettered person thinks of the author of Donovan; I would only point out that the organs of literary opinion do not recognise her existence. I cannot recollect ever noticing a prominent review of one of her books in any leading paper. I never heard them so much as mentioned by any critical reader. To find out something about "Edna Lyall" I have just consulted the latest edition of Men of the Time, but she is unknown to that not excessively austere compendium. And now for the reverse of the medal. I lately requested the mistress of a girls' school, a friend of mine, to ask her elder classes to write down the name of the greatest English author. The universal answer was "Shakespeare." What could be more respectable? But the second question was, "Who is your favourite English author?" And this time, by a large majority, Edna Lyall bore off the bell.

I think this amiable lady may be consoled for the slight which Men of the Time puts upon her. It seems plain that she is a very great personage indeed to all the girls of the time. But if you ask me how such a subterranean reputation as this is formed, what starts it, how it is supported, I can only say I have failed, after some not unindustrious search, to discover. I may but conjecture that, as I have suggested, the public instinctively feels the attraction of the article that satisfies its passing requirement. These illiterate successes—if I may use the word "illiterate" in its plain meaning and without offence—are exceedingly ephemeral, and sink into the ground as silently and rapidly as they rose from it. What has become of Mrs. Gore and Mrs. March? Who wrote Emilia Wyndham, and to what elegant pen did the girls who are now grandmothers owe Ellen Middleton? Alas! it has taken only forty years to strew the poppy of oblivion over these once thrilling titles.

For we have to face the fact that reputations are lost as well as won. What destroys the fame of an accepted author? This, surely, is a question not less interesting than that with which we started, and a necessary corollary to it. Not unfavourable reviews, certainly. An unjust review may annoy and depress the author, it may cheer a certain number of his enemies and cool the ardour of a few of his friends, but in the long run it is sure to be innocuous in proportion to its injustice. I have in my mind the mode in which Mr. Browning's poems were treated in certain quarters twenty years ago. I remember more than one instance in which critics were permitted, in newspapers which ought to have known better, to exemplify that charge of needless obscurity which it was then the fashion to bring against the poet, by the quotation of mutilated fragments, and even by the introduction of absurd mistakes into the transcription of the text. Now, in this case, a few persons were possibly deterred from the further perusal of a writer who appeared, by these excerpts, to be a lunatic; but I think far more were roused into vehement sympathy for Mr. Browning by comparing the quotations with the originals, and so finding out that the reviewers had lied.

It rests with the author, not the critic, to destroy his own reputation. No one, as Bentley said, was ever written down except by himself, and the public is quite shrewd enough to do a rough sort of justice to the critic who accuses as well as to the author who is arraigned. As Dangle observes, "it certainly does hurt an author of delicate feelings to see the liberties the reviews take" with his writings; but if he is worth his salt at all, he will comfort himself by thinking, with Sir Fretful, that "their abuse is, after all, the best panegyric." To an author who is smarting under a more than common infliction of this kind of peppering, one consolatory consideration may be hinted—namely, that not to be spoken about at all is even worse than being maligned.

One of the most insidious perils that waylay the modern literary life is an exaggerated success at the outset of a career. A very remarkable instance of this has been seen in our time. Thirteen years ago a satire was published, which, although essentially destructive, and therefore not truly promising, was set forth with so much novelty of execution, brightness of wit, and variety of knowledge that the world was taken by storm. The author of that work was received with plaudits of the most exaggerated kind, and his second book was looked forward to with unbounded anticipation. It came, and though fresh and witty, it had less distinction, less vitality than the first. Book after book has marked ever a further step in steady decline, and now that once flattered and belaureled writer's name is one no more to conjure with. This, surely, is a pathetic fate. I can imagine no form of failure so desperately depressing as that which comes disguised in excessive juvenile success. In literature, at least as much as in other professions, the race is not to the swift, although the battle must eventually be to the strong. There is a blossoming, like that of forced annuals, which pays for its fulness and richness by a plague of early sterility.

What the young writer of wholesome ambition should pray for is, not to flash like a meteor on the astonished world of fashion, but by solid and admirable writing slowly to win a place which has a firm and wide basis. There is such a fate as to suffer through life from the top-heaviness of an initial success. Such a struggle as Thackeray's may be painful at the time, and may call for the exercise of a great deal of patience and good temper. It is, nevertheless, a better thing in the long run to serve a novitiate in Grub Street, than, like Samuel Warren, to be famous at thirty, and die almost forgotten at seventy. There is a deadly tendency in the mind which too easily has found others captivated by his effusions, to fancy that anything is good enough for the public. A precocious favourite conceives that he has only to whistle and the world will at any moment come back to him. The soldier who meets with no resistance throws aside his armour and relaxes his ambition. He forgets that, as Andrew Marvell says:

Some danger to a partially established reputation is to be met with from the fickleness of public taste and the easy satiety of readers. If an imaginative writer has won the attention of the public by a vigorous and original picture of some unhackneyed scene of life which is thoroughly familiar to himself, he is apt to find himself on the horns of a dilemma. If he turns to a new class of subjects, the public which has already "placed" him as an authority on a particular subject, will be disappointed; on the other hand, if he sticks to his last, he runs the chance of fatiguing his readers and of exhausting his own impressions. For such an author, ultimate success probably lies on the side of courage. He must reject the temptation to indulge the public with what he knows it wants, and must boldly force it to like another and still unrecognised phase of his talent. He ought, however, to make very sure that he is right, and not his readers, before he insists upon a change. It is not every one who possesses the versatility of the first Lord Lytton, and can conquer new worlds under a pseudonym at the age of fifty. There are plenty of instances of men of letters who, weary of being praised for what they did well, have tried to force down the throats of the public what everybody but themselves could see was ill-done. I remember Hans Christian Andersen, in the last year of his life, telling me that the books he should really be remembered by were his dramas and his novels, not the fairy-stories that everybody persisted in making so much fuss about. He had gone through life without gaining the least skill in gauging his own strength or weakness. Andersen, however, was exceptionally uncritical; and the author who is not blinded by vanity can generally tell, before he reaches middle life, in what his real power consists.

Yet, when we sum up the whole question, we have to confess that we know very little about the causes which lead to the distribution of public praise. The wind of fame bloweth where it listeth, and we hear the sound of it without knowing whence it cometh. This, however, appears to be certain, that, except in the case of those rare authors of exceptionally sublime genius who conquer attention by their force of originality, a great deal more than mere cleverness in writing is needful to make a reputation. Sagacity in selection, tact in dealing with other people, suppleness of character, rapidity in appreciation, and adroitness in action—all these are qualities which go to the formation of a broad literary reputation. In these days an author must be wide awake, and he must take a vast deal of trouble. The age is gone by when he could sit against the wall and let the gooseberries fall into his mouth. The increased pressure of competition tells upon the literary career as much as upon any other branch of professional life, and the author who wishes to continue to succeed must keep his loins girded.

1889.

THE LIMITS OF REALISM IN FICTION