MANUFACTURE OF FAME.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 4147, 6 July 1874, Page 3

MANUFACTURE OF FAME.

(From the London Globs.) It is one of the foibles of the present age to be always in a hurry. Doctors assure their patients that modem life is moving at a ruinous pace, and that modern men overburden themselves with thought and labour ; and the world, which is rather complimented at being pitied for over work, begins to think the assertion true. There is certainly one point in which we are quicker than our ancestors. They for the most part allowed their fame to grow with time. Even Shakespeare was in his life no more than one individual of a goodly company of wits, and Milton was poorly paid for his greatest work. But writers are much wiser now. They have found out a way by which they can anticipate the applause of posterity by manufacturing a little glorv for themselves. The notion of allowing a book, or a play, or a picture to stand before the world on its own merits has long ago been exploded. It belonged, with many other beliefs now lost, to a period of childish and foolish modesty, when great men were content with greatness, and did not need the noisy demonstrations of the crowd. Experience has shown that the dignity of genius demands a different attitude. It has been found out by painters and writers that if a man desires to be immortal he must look after the matter himself, and not leave to a careless world the duty of watching over a precious reputation. Our men of geuius have accordingly invented a process by which fame can be manufactvred, and the world is duly informed by persons authorised to that end of the right moment to express admiration and delight. We need hardly say that the manufacture proceeds independently of the inherent qualities of the particular work. It would be obviously inadmissible to allow an incautious public to form its own opinions, and it would be an unfair tax upon the labors of authorship to expect the writer or the painter to provide the materials for a favorable judgment. Moreover, such a method, even if it were fair to the " aristocracy of talent," whose feelings of course are most to be considered, would nevertheless fail in the complete security indispensable in an age of scientific exactness and certainty. The manufacture of fame is therefore intrusted to more competent hands. If the artist is a painter some thoroughly business-like dealer takes care that the work shall be popular, and if an author, then the matter is left to the energy and enterprise of the publisher. These men know how to manipulate the sluggish sympathies of tho artistic and reading world. They perfectly understand the value of large type, and do not underrate the uses of advertisements. Their ways are sometimes mysterious, and then the interest of the public is awakened by sly suggestions and short paragraphs. These intimations are followed by larger announcements. Suddenly the title of the particular book assumes gigantic proportions ; it meets the eye of the traveller at every railway station, and penetrates into the study upon the covers of literary reviews. The authors name is not mentioned, and this circumstance makes the mystery all the greater. Smith or Jones, or whoever he may be, is kept carefully behind a mask birring the whole process, and finally, when all is prepared, the book is launched upon the world. Of course, everybody reads it, and of course, also, for a few days no one dares to say how poor lie thinks it. An enormous sale has been effected before the work is discovered to be worthless, and for some time the newspapers are engaged in receiving the contradictions of different eminent authors, to whom the composition has been wrongly attributed. In the case of a painter the process is a little different. At first the world hears nothing but a vague record of Herculean labor. There is a sort of suspicion that thoroughness in art is pleasant to the crowd, and accordingly the work is said to have been years in preparation. When the proper moment arrives for general praise, the picture is duly enshrined in some sacred spot apart from its fellows. Into a half darkened chamber the public is admitted to breathe in whisperings its tutored devotion, and to worship in the ways in which it has been commanded. Thus the painter or the writer is made secure of his reputation without the disagreeable and wholly needless duty of doing well. Excellence becomes a low ideal, only sought by the helpless who cannot command the machinery of greatness, while the more influential spirits of the time are content to intrust their fame to appointed agents. We fear we can hardly anticipate a return to the more simple devices of former days. So many are now struggling for notoriety that writers who have only large pretensions and a fatal faculty of saying nothing in magnificent language to recommend them, cannot afford to do without the aid of those tricks to which they now resort. Men of real distinction, however, ought to dissociate themselves from questionable modes of attracting notice. They may be very sure that genius and high culture will in the long run win the applause they deserve. The works of really great men give delight to each new generation ; those of the shallow and noisy are forgotten.