You cannot understand why you have failed where others have succeeded.
You have far more Greek than Keats, more history than Scott, and you
know nineteen languages--ten of them to speak. With so many
accomplishments, it must indeed be hard to fail--though you do not seem
to have found it difficult. You have travelled too--have been twice
round the world, and have a thorough knowledge of the worst hotels.
Certainly, it is singular. Nevertheless, I must confess that the dullest
men I have ever met have been professors of history; the worst poets
have not only known Greek, but French as well; and, generally speaking
the most tiresome of my acquaintances have more degrees than I have
Latin to name them in. Alas! it is not experience, or travel, or
language, but the use we make of them, that makes literary success,
which, one may add, is particularly dependent--perhaps not
unnaturally--on the use we make of language. A book may be a book,
although there is neither Latin nor Greek, nor travel, nor
experience--in fact 'nothing' in it; and though, like myself, you may
pay an Oxford professor a thousand a year to correct your proofs, you
may still miss immortality.

To these intellectual and general equipments you add goodness of heart,
sincerity of conviction, and martyrdom for your opinions; you are, it
would seem, like many others of us, the best fellow and greatest man of
your acquaintance. Permit me to remind you that we are not talking of
goodness of heart, of strength or beauty of character, but of success,
which is a thing apart, a fine art in itself.

You confess that you are somewhat unpractical: you expect
others--hard-worked journalists who never met you--to tell you what to
read, how to form your style, and how 'to get into the magazines.' You
are, you say, with something of pride, but a poor business man. That is
a pity, for nearly every successful literary man of the day, and
particularly the novelists, are excellent business men. Indeed, the
history of literature all round has proved that the men who have been
masters of words have also been masters of things--masters of the facts
of life for which those words stand. Many writers have mismanaged their
affairs from idleness and indifference, but few from incapacity. Leigh
Hunt boasted that he could never master the multiplication-table.
Perhaps that accounts for his comparative failure as a writer.
Incompetence in one art is far from being a guarantee of competen