Chapter 9

Genius is as rare as ever, and is likely to continue so, but talent multiplies its appearances in full accordance with economic rules. No age ever submitted so constantly as ours to be amused or soothed by the romancer’s art. The permission has opened the door to a great number of capable, industrious, and workmanlike men and women, who have learnt their business of amusement well. To the vast majority of us literature is as much a trade as any of the accepted businesses of Holborn or Cheapside, and, apart from a lingering sentimentalism, there is no reason why the fact should not be owned. There is no shame in honest craftwork done for hire, and when the work is so excellent as at least a score of living English writers can make it, we have a right to take Some pride in it But with this day’s newspaper before me I learn that Mr. ------, who is the thin mimic of a fine imitator, has surpassed his last ‘masterpiece,’ and that a lady of name to me unknown has ‘rivalled’ his masterpiece, and that a gentleman to me unknown has produced a book which must necessarily be a ‘classic.’ A masterpiece is a rare thing, and words have a definite meaning. We call ‘Vanity Fair’ and ‘Esmond’ masterpieces, when we desire to be enthusiastic. We call ‘David Copperfield’ a masterpiece, and we find plenty of people to dispute the judgment. A masterpiece is the master work of a master hand. It must needs be a rare thing. It is not for the dignity of our work that it should be greeted by that sort of hysteric hiccoughing against which these pages have protested. It is a shameless insult to letters at large when the hysteria is bought and paid for, as does sometimes happen, and not less insulting when the gentleman who grinds the axe is fee’d in kind by the other gentleman who rolls the log.

And now, what is done is done, and I leave my task with some misgiving. If here and there I have given pain, I have not written a word in malice. The pleasantest part of my work has lain in the fact that with every desire to be honest I have so often been compelled to praise.

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