not
of all, let me distinctly say, to seek always notoriety, not to nurse and
keep before the public mind the best that has been evolved from time to
time, but to offer always something new. The year's flooring is threshed
off and the floor swept to make room for a fresh batch. Effort eventually
ceases for the old and approved, and is concentrated on experiments. This
is like the conduct of a newspaper. It is assumed that the public must be
startled all the time.

I speak of this freely because I think it as bad policy for the publisher
as it is harmful to the public of readers. The same effort used to
introduce a novelty will be much better remunerated by pushing the sale
of an acknowledged good piece of literature.

Literature depends, like every other product bought by the people, upon
advertising, and it needs much effort usually to arrest the attention of
our hurrying public upon what it would most enjoy if it were brought to
its knowledge.

It would not be easy to fix the limit in this vast country to the
circulation of a good book if it were properly kept before the public.
Day by day, year by year, new readers are coming forward with curiosity
and intellectual wants. The generation that now is should not be deprived
of the best in the last generation. Nay more, one publication, in any
form, reaches only a comparatively small portion of the public that would
be interested in it. A novel, for instance, may have a large circulation
in a magazine; it may then appear in a book; it may reach other readers
serially again in the columns of a newspaper; it may be offered again in
all the by-ways by subscription, and yet not nearly exhaust its
legitimate running power. This is not a supposition but a fact proved by
trial. Nor is it to be wondered at, when we consider that we have an
unequaled homogeneous population with a similar common-school education.
In looking over publishers' lists I am constantly coming across good
books out of print, which are practically unknown to this generation, and
yet are more profitable, truer to life and character, more entertaining
and amusing, than most of those fresh from the press month by month.

Of the effect upon the literary product of writing to order, in obedience
to a merely commercial instinct, I need not enlarge to a company of
authors, any more than to a company of artists I need to enlarge upon the
effect of a like commercial instinct upon art.

I am aware that the evol