LITERARY REPUTATIONS.

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 758, 5 March 1910, Page 9

LITERARY REPUTATIONS.

What makes literary reputations—lasting ones? According to the author .to whom most readers would assijru first place among contemporary Frenchmen, Anatole France, although something liko a''.'general opinion" dees favour certain books, this is "only in virtue of a. prejudice, and in no wise by choice and by the effect oV a spontaneous preference. The works which everv one admires are the works which no one examines." Lamb, too, has somcwhero a word about "all those volumes which no gentleman's library should bo without." And -our French writer (Toes on to describe these books "as a precious burden, that one passes on to others without looking ,at." One justifies a high opinion of such literature, by faith; the principle of imitation rules- in men's aesthetics as in their practical conduct of life. Hence, contends M. France, -;A book which for any reason has in the first place won some suffrages receives later on a still greater number. The first alone were free; all the rest but follow suit. . . [though] collectively,, they constitute. glory. Thus does one see that works despised at, their birth have small chance of ever pleasing, while, on tho contrary, works celebrated from the beginning, keep their reputation for a great while and are esteemed after becoming unintelligible.-. But are readers truly as childish as this? Do they so blindly follow the leader? .We think not. Reputations created by ono generation aro unmade by the next.- Goethe's "Werther" is regarded nowadays mainly as an ebullition of youth, an historical curiosity. "We remember reading iii. an' American' review of the ( . earlynineteenth century that Schiller's "Geistcrseher" was his greatest work. Who has received it, as'a "precious burden", to-day, and handed it on, reverently, without examination? No, the "Geisterseher," like, many another "minor" production that was onco hailed with acclaim, is buried deep in its writer's '.'collected works." Who reads Southey now? Yet he had the'initial' 'suffrages" insisted on by M. France as almost the .only requisite for lasting fame.

On the other hand—and this .-is more important—the initial suffrages, or those of the at any rate, are not- strictly necessary in this matter of literary glory: One need not have been a "best-seller" to' go down the line of tho future, not simply; as a great master, bui as a writer who is read. Tho poet Gray was little known in his own day, except to a small group. Yet ono of his poems "has been pronounced by the vox popnli to be tho most' perfect in the language," writes his biographer in the great "Dictionary." Swift's name is not forgotten, and lie, top, is still read, yet his "Battle of the Books" remained in manuscript some ten years; Ms "Tale of the Tub" seven; and heiher, set the Thames afire. In the nineteenth century France had few novelists to whom critics pay their respects so frequently, or who have so many devotees, as Stendhal and .Flaubert; yet Stendhal was-.all but' unknown to the contemporary public, and Flaubert was better known for a certain lawsuit than for his romances. In England,'meanwhile, Edward FitzGerald lived and translated, in perfect obscurity,, and liis books, even his "Kubaiyat," fell dead from the-press. Since his death, lie has been the subject of a cult equal to that which Edgar I'oe has enjoyed —Poe, who couldn't command "suffrages" enough to earn an honest living. A rijiming start may be an excellent thing, in literature as ill,field-sports; it. is n'ot, however,. indispensable. i y/ "

For the most' eloquent example of- a reputation which lias grown far from rapidly, hut which is great already, anil will go further, one may safely invoke George Meredith.. Those who'write as tU'ey please,'and hot. to suit the piping of the crowd, are proverbially ill paitl for their pains; yet Meredith, one of the most mannered stylists, and ono of the most Halved, in nil English literature, left, when lie died last May, a comfortably' large estate. (Of cij.urse, in calljng. His handful of somo'tens'of thousands a small fortune, we speak according to tlio standpoint of simple folk like artists and novelists.) "-A. part of Meredith's estate '-we caniiot, know how largo—represented the earnings and savings of a novelist who, at once serious and persevering amipowerful, to a great extent made his own public, and, making, educated it. Neither the hostility of reviewers nor the indifference of the wider public can permanently repress a fairly robust genius. Of Robert Louis Stevenson and of George Meredith it has. been "said '.that.,.their publishers would gladly 'have disposed of their copyrights ,at the outset, and would 110 less anxiously have bought them back again a few years later oil. Neither of these authors stands quite in the first rank of novelists, and yet their place is now.defined, within a rung or two, and it is: in each case, a safe place. That works "despised at their birth" by tlio greater, public "have small chance of ever, pleasing," as the author of "Lo Livro d'Epicure" assorts, one may confidently deny.—New York "Nation."