ent used to write to the Literary Fund when I was on the
committee: 'This leaves the Poet at his divine mission in a corner of
the single room. The Poet's father is wiping his spectacles. The Poet's
mother is weaving'--Yah!'" He was equally intolerant of every
magnificent proposal that should render the literary man independent of
the bookseller, and he sharply criticized even a compromise to replace
the half-profits system by one of royalties on copies sold. "What does
it come to?" he remarked of an ably-written pamphlet in which this was
urged (10th of November 1866): "what is the worth of the remedy after
all? You and I know very well that in nine cases out of ten the author
is at a disadvantage with the publisher because the publisher has
capital and the author has not. We know perfectly well that in nine
cases out of ten money is advanced by the publisher before the book is
producible--often, long before. No young or unsuccessful author (unless
he were an amateur and an independent gentleman) would make a bargain
for having that royalty, to-morrow, if he could have a certain sum of
money, or an advance of money. The author who could command that
bargain, could command it to-morrow, or command anything else. For the
less fortunate or the less able, I make bold to say--with some knowledge
of the subject, as a writer who made a publisher's fortune long before
he began to share in the real profits of his books--that if the
publishers met next week, and resolved henceforth to make this royalty
bargain and no other, it would be an enormous hardship and misfortune
because the authors could not live while they wrote. The pamphlet seems
to me just another example of the old philosophical chess-playing, with
human beings for pieces. 'Don't want money.' 'Be careful to be born with
means, and have a banker's account.' 'Your publisher will settle with
you, at such and such long periods according to the custom of his trade,
and you will settle with your butcher and baker weekly, in the meantime,
by drawing cheques as I do.' 'You must be sure not to want money, and
then I have worked it out for you splendidly.'"

Less has been said in this work than might perhaps have been wished, of
the way in which his editorship of _Household Words_ and _All the Year
Round_ was discharged. It was distinguished above all by liberality; and
a scrupulous consideration and delicacy, evinced by him to all his
contributors, was part of the esteem in