From a College Window

ion of letters; and if my inquirer has confessed that he will be obliged to earn his living, I have always replied

dsome income; but to achieve conspicuous mundane success in literature, a certain degree of good fortune is almost more important than genius, or even than talent. Ability by itself, even literary ability of a high order, is not sufficient; it is necessary to have a vogue, to create or satisfy a special demand, to hit the taste of the age. But the writer of belles-lettres, the literary writer pure and simple, can hardly hope to earn a living wage, unless he is content to do, and indeed fortunate enough to obtain, a good deal of hackwork as well. He must be ready to write reviews and introductions; to pour out occasional articles, to compile, to edit, to select; and the chances are that if his livelihood depends upon his labour, he w

as an eccentric gentleman who wrote solely for his own amusement; since the inheritor of Rokeby found among the family portraits of the magnates that adorned his walls a picture of the novel

itably books; they generally have a title-page, an emotional dedication, an ultra-modest preface, followed by a certain number of pages of undeniable print. It is common enough too, at a big dinner-party, to meet three or four people, without the least professional dinginess, who have written books. Mr. Winston Churchill said the other day, with much humour, that he could not reckon himself a professional author because he had only written five books-the same number as

ore the publication by Mr. Churchill of the

e no reason why people should be discouraged from such diversion, any more than that they should be discouraged from practising music, or making sketches in water-colour, because they only attain a low standard of execution in such pursuits. Indeed, I think that hours devoted to the production of inferior literature, by persons of leisure, are quite as well bestowed as hours spent in golfing and motoring; to engage in the task of writing a book implies a certain sympathy with intellectual things; and I am disposed to applaud and encourage anything which increases intellectual appreciation in our country at the present time. There is not too much of it abroad; and I care very little how it is acquired, if only it is acquired. The only way in which these amateurs can be tiresome is if they insist upon reading their compositions aloud in a domestic circle, or if they request one to read a published book and give them a candid opinion. I once stayed with a worthy country gentleman who, evening after e

temperament is to be seen at the present time in the enormous and consuming passion for athletic exercise in the open air. We are not an intellectual nation, and we must do something; we are wealthy and secure, and, in default of regular work, we have got to organize our hours of leisure on the supposition that we have something to do. I have little doubt that if we became a more intellectual nation the change would be signalize

the world. Nature is full of exquisite sights and sounds, day by day; the stage of the world is crowded with interesting and fascinating personalities, rich in contrasts, in characteristics, in humour, in pathos. We are surrounded, the moment we pass outside of the complex material phenomena which surround us, by all kinds of wonderful secrets and incomprehensible mysteries. What is this strange pageant that unrolls

cinating document. My only sorrow is that the amateurs of whom I have spoken above will not do this; they rather turn to external and impersonal impressions, relate definite things, what they see on their travels, for instance, describing just the things which any one can see. They tend to indulge in the melancholy labour of translation, or employ customary, familiar forms, such as the novel or the play. If only they would write diaries and publish them; compose imaginary letters; let one inside the house of self instead of keeping one wandering in the park! The real interest of literature is the apprehending of other points of view; one spends an immense time in what is called society, in the pursuit of other people's views; but what a very little grain results from an intolerable deal of chaff! And all because people are conventional and not simple-minded; because

rough a stage in which they are conscious of a throng of kindred notions, all more or less bearing on the central thought, but the movements of which they cannot wholly control. Their thoughts are like a turbulent crowd, and one's business is to drill them into an ordered regimen

ting poetry. The habit of diarizing is easily acquired, and as soon as it becomes habitual, the day is no more complete without it than it is complete without a cold bath and regular meals. People say that they have not time to keep a diary; but they would never say that they had not time to take a bath or to have their meals. A diary need not be a dreary chronicle of one's movements; it should aim rather at giving a salient account of some particular episode, a

ere comes a time when one abandons poetry, or is abandoned by it; and, after all, prose is the most real and natural form of expression. There arrives, in the case of one who has practised poetical expression diligently, a wonderful sense of freedom, of expansiveness, of delight, when he begins to use what has been material for poetry for the purposes of prose. Poetical expression is strictly conditioned by length of stanzas, dignity of vocabulary, and the pain

style; and thus I feel that people whose aim is to write vigorously should abstain from even reading authors whose style affects them strongly. Stevenson himself dared not read Livy; Pater confessed that he could not afford to read Stevenson; he added, that he did not consider his own style better than the style of Stevenson-rather the reverse-but he had his own theory, his own method of expression, deliberately adopted and diligently pursued. He therefore carefully refrained from reading an author whom he felt unconsciously compelled to imitate. The question of style, then, is one which a writer who desires originality should leave altogether alone. It must emerge of itself, or it is sure to lack distinctiveness. I saw once a curious instance of this. I knew a diligent writer, whose hasty and unconsidered writings were forcible, lively, and lucid, penetrated by his own poetical and incisive personality; but he set no store by these writings, and if they were ever praised in his presence, he said that he was ashamed of them for being so rough. This man devoted many years to the composition of a great li

eam has a beauty of its own, a beauty of liquid curve and delicate murmur, its chief beauty is in the exquisite transfiguring effect which it has over the shingle, the vegetation that glimmers and sways beneath the surface. How dry, how commonplace the pebbles on the edge look! How stiff and ruinous the plants from which the wate

ateful heart. One who devotes himself to writing should find, then, his chief joy in the practice of his art, not in the rewards of it; publication has its merits, because it entails upon one the labour of perfecting the book as far as possible; if one wrote without publication in view, one would be tempted to shirk the final labour of the file; one would leave sentences incomplete, paragraphs unfinished; and then, too, imperfect as reviews often are, it is wholesome as well as interesting to see the impression that one's work makes on others. If one's work is generally contemned, it is bracing to know that one fails in one's appeal, that one

turn, gave me the requisite bias, the momentous impulse"? We tend to want to do things on too large a scale, to affect great masses of people, to influence numerous hearts. An author should be more than content if he finds he has made a difference to a handful of people, or given innocent pleasure to a small company. Only to those whose heart is high, whose patience is inexhaustible, whose vigour is great, whose emotion is passionate, is it given to make a deep mark upon the age; and there is needed too the magical