e end is not that of snobbery, but an eternal treasure.

I think that my subject, if capable of developing taste, would find his
way to the easier classic works, such as Carlyle's _French Revolution_,
Boswell's _Life of Johnson_, perhaps even to Wesley's _Journal_. But at
that stage the subject would have to be dismissed to live or die. Enough
would have been done to lead him away from boredom, from dull solemnity
and false training, to purify his taste and make it of some use. The day
is light and the past is dark; all eyes can see the day and find it
splendid, but eyes that would pierce the darkness of the past must grow
familiar with lighter mists; to every man the life of the world about
him is that man's youth, while old age is ill to apprehend.

Litany of the Novelist

There are times when one wearies of literature; when one reads over
one's first book, reflects how good it was, and how greatly one was
misunderstood; when one considers the perils and misadventures of so
accidental a life and likens oneself to those dogs described by Pliny
who run fast as they drink from the Nile for fear they should be seized
by the crocodiles; when one tires of following Mr Ford Madox Hueffer's
advice, 'to sit down in the back garden with pen, ink, and paper, to put
vine leaves in one's hair and to write'; when one remembers that in
Flaubert's view the literary man's was a dog's life (metaphors about
authors lead you back to the dog) but that none other was worth living.
In those moods, one does not agree with Flaubert; rather, one agrees
with Butler:--

'... those that write in rhyme still make
The one verse for the other's sake;
For one for sense and one for rhyme,
I think's sufficient at one time.'

One sees life like Mr Polly, as 'a rotten, beastly thing.' One sighs for
adventure, to become a tramp or an expert witness. One knows that one
will never be so popular as Beecham's pills; thence is but a step to
picture oneself as less worthy.

We novelists are the showmen of life. We hold up its mirror, and, if it
look at us at all, it mostly makes faces at us. Indeed a writer might
have with impunity sliced Medusa's head: she would never have noticed
him. The truth is that the novelist is a despised creature. At moments,
when, say, a learned professor has devoted five columns to showing that
a particular novelist is one of the pests of society, the writer feels
exalted. But as society shows no signs of want