respecting the advantage
of knowing 'science, history, politics, English literature, and the art
of composition,' they 'don't see why' they shouldn't get on without
them. Especially with those who aspire to write fiction (which, by its
intrinsic attractiveness no less than by the promise it affords of
golden grain, tempts the majority), it is quite pitiful to note how they
cling to that notion of 'the corn-sieve,' and cannot be persuaded that
story-telling requires an apprenticeship like any other calling. They
flatter themselves that they can weave plots as the spider spins his
thread from (what let us delicately term) his inner consciousness, and
fondly hope that intuition will supply the place of experience. Some of
them, with a simplicity that recalls the days of Dick Whittington, think
that 'coming up to London' is the essential step to this line of
business, as though the provinces contained no fellow-creatures worthy
to be depicted by their pen, or as though, in the metropolis, Society
would at once exhibit itself to them without concealment, as fashionable
beauties bare themselves to the photographers.

This is, of course, the laughable side of the affair, but, to me at
least, it has also a serious one; for, to my considerable embarrassment
and distress, I find that my well-meaning attempt to point out the
advantages of literature as a profession has received a much too free
translation, and implanted in many minds hopes that are not only
sanguine but Utopian.

For what was written in the essay alluded to I have nothing to reproach
myself with, for I told no more than the truth. Nor does the
unsettlement of certain young gentleman's futures (since by their own
showing they were to the last degree unstable to begin with) affect me
so much as their parents and guardians appear to expect; but I am sorry
to have shaken however undesignedly, the 'pillars of domestic peace' in
any case, and desirous to make all the reparation in my power. I regret
most heartily that I am unable to place all literary aspirants in places
of emolument and permanency out of hand; but really (with the exception
perhaps of the Universal Provider in Westbourne Grove) this is hardly to
be expected of any man. The gentleman who raised the devil, and was
compelled to furnish occupation for him, affords in fact the only
appropriate parallel to my unhappy case. 'If you can do nothing to
provide my son with another place,' writes one indignant Pa