his
readers at the gross disparity between the ten thousand dollars Jones
gets for his novel, and the five pounds Milton got for his epic. I
have always thought Milton was paid too little, but I will own that he
ought not to have been paid at all, if it comes to that. Again, I say
that no man ought to live by any art; it is a shame to the art if not
to the artist; but as yet there is no means of the artist's living
otherwise, and continuing an artist.
The literary man has certainly no complaint to make of the newspaper
man, generally speaking. I have often thought with amazement of the
kindness shown by the press to our whole unworthy craft, and of the
help so lavishly and freely given to rising and even risen authors. To
put it coarsely, brutally, I do not suppose that any other business
receives so much gratuitous advertising, except the theatre. It is
enormous, the space given in the newspapers to literary notes, literary
announcements, reviews, interviews, personal paragraphs, biographies,
and all the rest, not to mention the vigorous and incisive attacks made
from time to time upon different authors for their opinions of
romanticism, realism, capitalism, socialism, Catholicism, and
Sandemanianism. I have sometimes doubted whether the public cared for
so much of it all as the editors gave them, but I have always said this
under my breath, and I have thankfully taken my share of the common
bounty. A curious fact, however, is that this vast newspaper publicity
seems to have very little to do with an author's popularity, though
ever so much with his notoriety. Those strange subterranean fellows
who never come to the surface in the newspapers, except for a
contemptuous paragraph at long intervals, outsell the famousest of the
celebrities, and secretly have their horses and yachts and country
seats, while immodest merit is left to get about on foot and look up
summer board at the cheaper hotels. That is probably right, or it
would not happen; it seems to be in the general scheme, like
millionairism and pauperism; but it becomes a question, then, whether
the newspapers, with all their friendship for literature, and their
actual generosity to literary men, can really help one much to fortune,
however much they help one to fame. Such a question is almost too
dreadful, and though I have asked it, I will not attempt to answer it.
I would much rather consider the question whether if the newspapers can
make an auth
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