REWARDS OF LITERATURE.

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1581, 26 October 1912, Page 9

REWARDS OF LITERATURE.

That Mr. Andrew Lang has left twelve thousand pounds will' of course bo seized upon by nil who desire to argue that under modern conditions real literarv skill can earn something more than a bare living; but their ormonents will justifiably crush them by retorting that this is <vn exceptional ease which proves the rule. Mr. Lang was not only an author; but bo was reader to a firm of publishers Oi tho highest reputation and stability, a position not won by luck, and doubtless not retained without a continued and strenuous exercise of bis literary capacities. Tho actual number of volumes for which he was responsible is not so remarkable, from a literary point of view, as tho number of subjects with which he proved himself competent to deal; the man .who has a light hand in kneading

the intricacies of verse cannot usually bo expected to possess also tho patience and energy necessary to the historian and ethnologist. .An exceptional ability breaks rules; Victorian aud Edwardian litera-

ture has been mado to pay—with a comforlablo margin. It is perhaps unnecessary to do more than hint that there is a 'dilterenco be-

tween what Mr. Barrie calls that terrible thing, a Scotchman "on the make," and tho usual literary genius, with all the traditional carelessness of reward associated with the artistic temperament; but it is obviously one thing to make bread-and-butter out of imaginative literature and another to earn a seven-course dinner out of historical devilling. .Milton received live pounds for "Paradise Lost"; ■this js a "fact" constantly reiterated m tho 'Answers to Questions" column of our popular illiterate-literary weeklies, which nevertheless lail to point out the economic value of five pounds in the vear 1667. Actually ho left • nine hundred pounds, which nowadays would bo worth souie three thousaud pounds. Macaulay received moro than three times that amount in a single cheque. We submit, however, that Milton's name stands higher on the scroll than Macaulay's; just as we consider .Meredith a greater writer than the author of "East Lynue." But we cannot flatter ourselves that as many million copies of .Meredith's novels hav'o been sold as of Mrs. Henry Wood's. In our own day there is a-woman writer of fiction—not the one of whom anvono over thirty years of age will think first, but a' later ono promising her eclipse—who is rumoured to have written a novel with a •view' to refurnishing hci • drawing-room out of the profits. That novel has gone right round the world, although—or because—it is not a piece of work that tho critic sets on his shelf beside. Meredith or Steveuson; and the author, on a modest computation, must have earned "enough to', furnish two or three hundred draw-ing-rooms expensively. Geuius continues to inhabit garrets; the successful author can-afford to finance a by-election once a month.

Such has been, is, and apparently always; will ho, the condition Of letters in our country; any literary Englishman who observes, that dJo'staud's "Cyrano de Bergerac"is'iu.its three hundred and fiftieth thousand, as 'it was the last time we picked up. a copy, may well, turn green with envy'of our innately literary neighbours. Probably the French national. habit of shrugging the shoulders could, be traced back to the period, at which they first learned the quality of the literature which achieves a like sale in England. And yet it is at onco an awful and 'comforting thought that.in Prance there may be literary men who deny M. Rostand admission to their charmed circle.' and who live by taking in one another s presentation copies, even as has been known to happen in the literary coteries of London. Quis, in short, judicabit? AVhere in desperation are we to turn to find the ultimate criterion? The connoisseur may seek consolation in a philological parallel between the word "popular" and tho word "vulgar," but tho consolation is as cold as the mutton to wliich ho comes home. Literature does not pay. The wages of sin is death and postage stamps. .Artemus Ward, himself a "literary fellow," was not the first to discover that truth, though the expression of it is characteristic enough. Wo conceive him to have been moralising on the axiom that a time-server's reward is temporal, not eternal. The mau who sets out to court popular favour may make mono/, and the kind of bubble reputation that money brings, but he does not acquire fame, "acre perennius." (Horace undoubtedly used "brass' in a modern sense.) That this is true, at any rnto. of our bovine public, which requires that a generation or two should elapse before the hall-mark may he set on a book, has bscn lately realised by the parties responsible for the prolongation of tho period of copyright. If this principle lie progressively extended by. future ages, the wages of pure literature may still be dentil to its author, but. will certainly be posthumous postage-stamps to take his grandchildren off the Civil Pension - List or tlio rates. In contemporary civilisation, just as the millionaire manufacturer quietens the conscience of "his old ago by charity.and benefits to those whose noses have been ground in his own mills, our public occasionally awakes to tho fact thab So T aud-So's great nephew .is in-,- the workhouse, and that as they now enjoy So-and-So'g works they ought to Tcward his memory vicariously. Here steps in Socrates, the corrupter of youth and the devastator of youth's pleasant dreams. Where is that process, which obviously cannot bo extended indefinitely, to stop? How many generations are to bo held entitled to enjoy the profits of their ancestor's literary genius? Are we sociologically justified iu emancipating his grandsons from the union? Ought we to refuse even to his son the right of living on tho fruits which he may think ho was born to consume? Surely, then, a man is right if he produces a commodity which enables him to keep himself in comfort; aud provided the world demands the greatest happiness for the greatest number, a man who would live by,'writing must make the greatest number, happy.- The nearest equivalent to Socrates that England can produce—from Ireland—has pointed out through the month of one of his innumerable characters that a man has no more right to consume happiness without producing on equal amount of happiness than be has to consume wealth without producing its equivalent. How then, my literary friend, can you expect the world to make you happy if you only givo it puro literature, which is notoriously depressing? ,' The literary friend can hardly retort except by. fetching the cup of hemlock. If only we knew something about Shakespeare, we in England might feel ourselves'entitled to speak with authority on the'' rewards of literature. Nobody denies that he had eenius; the vast majority consider him the one genius. No reader can avoid the conclusion that he is at. the height of imagination in his .tragedies, and you cannot pretend that tragedy is popular. It is equally obvious'-that he consistently sought, in certain idays and in certain scenes, to'tickle the ears', of the groundlings, whether by apneals to their sense of humour or by eliciting the.satisfaction of feeling patriotic. He is said to have retired a rich man, and to have bought lands and houses; yet the. British public did not discover him until ho had been -dead for more than a century. Assuming the truth of the legends, we may assume that his old ago was happy; but it is-impossible to allege tn.at.his contemporaries paid him all • that they owed, and subsequent generations have-annro-nrinfed his virtues to adorn the record of England, while continuing to neglect their own mute impecunious Miltons!—"Saturtlav Review."