eternal fitness of things, the poet's song would have been
given to the world, and the poet would have been cared for by the whole
human brotherhood, as any man should be who does the duty that every
man owes it.

The instinctive sense of the dishonor which money-purchase does to art
is so strong that sometimes a man of letters who can pay his way
otherwise refuses pay for his work, as Lord Byron did, for a while,
from a noble pride, and as Count Tolstoy has tried to do, from a noble
conscience. But Byron's publisher profited by a generosity which did
not reach his readers; and the Countess Tolstoy collects the copyright
which her husband foregoes; so that these two eminent instances of
protest against business in literature may be said not to have shaken
its money basis. I know of no others; but there may be many that I am
culpably ignorant of. Still, I doubt if there are enough to affect the
fact that Literature is Business as well as Art, and almost as soon.
At present business is the only human solidarity; we are all bound
together with that chain, whatever interests and tastes and principles
separate us, and I feel quite sure that in writing of the Man of
Letters as a Man of Business, I shall attract far more readers than I
should in writing of him as an Artist. Besides, as an artist he has
been done a great deal already; and a commercial state like ours has
really more concern in him as a business man. Perhaps it may sometimes
be different; I do not believe it will till the conditions are
different, and that is a long way off.

III.

In the meantime I confidently appeal to the reader's imagination with
the fact that there are several men of letters among us who are such
good men of business that they can command a hundred dollars a thousand
words for all they write; and at least one woman of letters who gets a
hundred and fifty dollars a thousand words. It is easy to write a
thousand words a day, and supposing one of these authors to work
steadily, it can be seen that his net earnings during the year would
come to some such sum as the President of the United States gets for
doing far less work of a much more perishable sort. If the man of
letters were wholly a business man this is what would happen; he would
make his forty or fifty thousand dollars a year, and be able to consort
with bank presidents, and railroad officials, and rich tradesmen, and
other flowers of our plutocracy on equal terms. Bu