"

"Possibly; but then I suppose the writers take great pains with the
language they employ, and devote themselves to the culture and polish of
words and rhythms of an art?"

"Certainly they do: all great poets do that. Though the gift of poetry
may be inborn, the gift requires as much care to make it available as a
block of metal does to be made into one of your engines."

"And doubtless your poets have some incentive to bestow all those pains
upon such verbal prettinesses?"

"Well, I presume their instinct of song would make them sing as the bird
does; but to cultivate the song into verbal or artificial prettiness,
probably does need an inducement from without, and our poets find it in
the love of fame--perhaps, now and then, in the want of money."

"Precisely so. But in our society we attach fame to nothing which man,
in that moment of his duration which is called 'life,' can perform. We
should soon lose that equality which constitutes the felicitous essence
of our commonwealth if we selected any individual for pre-eminent
praise: pre-eminent praise would confer pre-eminent power, and the
moment it were given, evil passions, now dormant, would awake: other
men would immediately covet praise, then would arise envy, and with envy
hate, and with hate calumny and persecution. Our history tells us that
most of the poets and most of the writers who, in the old time, were
favoured with the greatest praise, were also assailed by the greatest
vituperation, and even, on the whole, rendered very unhappy, partly
by the attacks of jealous rivals, partly by the diseased mental
constitution which an acquired sensitiveness to praise and to blame
tends to engender. As for the stimulus of want; in the first place, no
man in our community knows the goad of poverty; and, secondly, if he
did, almost every occupation would be more lucrative than writing.

"Our public libraries contain all the books of the past which time has
preserved; those books, for the reasons above stated, are infinitely
better than any can write nowadays, and they are open to all to read
without cost. We are not such fools as to pay for reading inferior
books, when we can read superior books for nothing."

"With us, novelty has an attraction; and a new book, if bad, is read
when an old book, though good, is neglected."

"Novelty, to barbarous states of society struggling in despair for
something better, has no doubt an attraction, denied to us, who see
noth