ny one
point to any other point;' only you must have the 'other point' to begin
with, or you can't draw the line. So far from being 'straight,' it goes
wabbling aimlessly about like a wire fastened at one end and not at the
other, which may dazzle, but cannot sustain; or rather what it does
sustain is so exceedingly minute, that it reminds one of the minnow
which the inexperienced angler flatters himself he has caught, but which
the fisherman has in fact previously put on his hook for bait.

This class of writer is not altogether unconscious of the absence of
dramatic interest in his composition. He writes to his editor (I have
read a thousand such letters): 'It has been my aim, in the enclosed
contribution, to steer clear of the faults of the sensational school of
fiction, and I have designedly abstained from stimulating the
unwholesome taste for excitement.' In which high moral purpose he has
undoubtedly succeeded; but, unhappily, in nothing else. It is quite true
that some writers of fiction neglect 'story' almost entirely, but then
they are perhaps the greatest writers of all. Their genius is so
transcendent that they can afford to dispense with 'plot;' their humour,
their pathos, and their delineation of human nature are amply
sufficient, without any such meretricious attraction; whereas our too
ambitious young friend is in the position of the needy knife-grinder,
who has not only no story to tell, but in lieu of it only holds up his
coat and breeches 'torn in the scuffle'--the evidence of his desperate
and ineffectual struggles with literary composition. I have known such
an aspirant to instance Miss Gaskell's 'Cranford' as a parallel to the
backboneless flesh-and-bloodless creation of his own immature fancy, and
to recommend the acceptance of the latter upon the ground of their
common rejection of startling plot and dramatic situation. The two
compositions have certainly _that_ in common; and the flawless diamond
has some things, such as mere sharpness and smoothness, in common with
the broken beer-bottle.

Many young authors of the class I have in my mind, while more modest as
respects their own merits, are even still less so as regards their
expectations from others. 'If you will kindly furnish me with a
subject,' so runs a letter now before me, 'I am sure I could do very
well; my difficulty is that I never can think of anything to write
about. Would you be so good as to oblige me with a plot for a novel?' It