by the reader's most obedient writer. | the rest. A doze ensues. Pleasing The two men are as different, in my book drops suddenly, is picked up mind's eye, asas Lord Palmerston once with an air of some confu and M. Disraeli let us say. But there is that blunder at page 990, line 76, volume 84 of "The Cornhill Magazine," and it is past mending; and I wish in my life I had made no worse blunders or errors than that which is hereby acknowledged.

sion, is laid presently softly in lap: head falls on comfortable armchair cushion: eyes close: soft nasal music is heard. Am I telling Club secrets? Of afternoons, after lunch, I say, scores of sensible fogies have a doze. Perhaps I have fallen asleep Another Finis written. Another over that very book to which "Finis mile-stone passed on this journey from has just been written. "And if the birth to the next world! Sure it is writer sleeps, what happens to the a subject for solemn cogitation. Shall readers? says Jones, coming down we continue this story-telling busi- upon me with his lightning wit. ness, and be voluble to the end of What? You did sleep over it? And our age? Will it not be presently a very good thing too. These eyes time, O prattler, to hold your tongue, have more than once seen a friend and let younger people speak? I dozing over pages which this hand have a friend, a painter, who, like has written. There is a vignette other persons who shall be nameless, somewhere in one of my books of a is growing old. He has never painted friend so caught napping with "Penwith such laborious finish as his works dennis," or the "Newcomes," in his now show. This master is still the lap; and if a writer can give you a most humble and diligent of scholars. sweet, soothing, harmless sleep, has Of Art, his mistress, he is always an he not done you a kindness? So is eager, reverent pupil. In his calling, the author who excites and interests in yours, in mine, industry and humil- you worthy of your thanks and beneity will help and comfort us. A word dictions. I am troubled with fever with you. In a pretty large experi- and ague, that seizes me at odd interence I have not found the men who vals and prostrates me for a day. write books superior in wit or learn- There is cold fit, for which, I am thanking to those who don't write at all. ful to say, hot brandy and water In regard of mere information, non- is prescribed, and this induces hot writers must often be superior to fit, and so on. In one or two of these writers. You don't expect a lawyer fits I have read novels with the most in full practice to be conversant with fearful contentment of mind. Once, all kinds of literature; he is too busy on the Mississippi, it was my dearly with his law; and so a writer is com- beloved "Jacob Faithful: once at monly too busy with his own books Frankfort O. M., the delightful to be able to bestow attention on the "Vingt Ans Après" of Monsieur works of other people. After a day's Dumas: once at Tunbridge Wells, work (in which I have been depicting, the thrilling "Woman in White: let us say, the agonies of Louisa on and these books gave me amusement parting with the Captain, or the atro- from morning till sunset. I rememcious behavior of the wicked Marquis ber those ague fits with a great deal to Lady Emily), I march to the Club, of pleasure and gratitude. Think of proposing to improve my mind and a whole day in bed, and a good novel keep myself "posted up,' as the for a companion! No cares: no reAmericans phrase it, with the litera- morse about idleness: no visitors: ture of the day. And what happens? and the Woman in White or the Given, a walk after luncheon, a pleas- Chevalier d'Artagnan to tell me stoing book, and a most comfortable ries from dawn till night! "Please, arm-chair by the fire, and you know ma'am, my master's compliments,

وو

heavy. Ha, dilectissimi fratres! It is in regard of sins not found out that we may say or sing (in an undertone, in a most penitent and lugubrious minor-key), Miserere nobis miseris peccatoribus.

and can he have the third volume?" rel with a certain well-known person (This message was sent to an aston- (I believed a statement regarding ished friend and neighbor who lent me him which his friends imparted to me, volume by volume, the W. in W.) and which turned out to be quite inHow do you like your novels? I like correct). To his dying day that mine strong, "hot with," and no mis- quarrel was never quite made up. I take: no love-making: no observa- said to his brother, "Why is your tions about society: little dialogue, brother's soul still dark against me? except where the characters are bully- It is I who ought to be angry and ing each other: plenty of fighting: unforgiving: for I was in the wrong." and a villain in the cupboard, who is In the region which they now inhabit to suffer tortures just before Finis. I (for Finis has been set to the volumes don't like your melancholy Finis. I of the lives of both here below), if never read the history of a consump- they take any cognizance of our tive heroine twice. If I might give a squabbles, and tittle-tattles, and gosshort hint to an impartial writer (as sips on earth here, I hope they admit "The Examiner" used to say in old that my little error was not of a nature days), it would be to act not à la mode unpardonable. If you have never le pays de Pole (I think that was the committed a worse, my good sir, surephraseology), but always to give quar-ly the score against you will not be ter. In the story of Philip, just come to an end, I have the permission of the author to state that he was going to drown the two villains of the piece -a certain Doctor F and a certain Mr. T. H on board "The President," or some other tragic ship - but you see I relented. I pictured to myself Firmin's ghastly face amid the crowd of shuddering people on that reeling deck in the lonely ocean, and thought, "Thou ghastly lying wretch, thou shall not be drowned: thou shalt have a fever only; a knowledge of thy danger; and a chance ever so small a chance — of repentance. I wonder whether he did repent when he found himself in the yellow-fever in Virginia? The probability is, he fancied that his son had injured him very much, and forgave him on his deathbed. Do you imagine there is a great deal of genuine right-down remorse in the world? Don't people rather find excuses which make their minds easy; endeavor to prove to themselves that they have been lamentably belied and misunderstood; and try and forgive the persecutors who will present that bill when it is due; and not bear malice against the cruel ruffian who takes them to the police-office for stealing the spoons? Years ago I had a quar

Among the sins of commission which novel-writers not seldom perpetrate, is the sin of grandiloquence, or tall-talking, against which for my part, I will offer up a special libera me. This is the sin of schoolmasters, governesses, critics, sermoners, and instructors of young or old people. Nay (for I am making a clean breast, and liberating my soul), perhaps of all the novel-spinners now extant, the present speaker is the most addicted to preaching. Does he not stop perpetually in his story and begin to preach to you? When he ought to be engaged with business, is he not forever taking the Muse by the sleeve, and plaguing her with some of his cynical sermons? I cry peccavi loudly and heartily. I tell you I would like to be able to write a story which should show no egotism whatever- in which there should be no reflections, no cynicism, no vulgarity (and so forth), but an incident in every other page, a villain, a battle, a mystery, in every chapter. I should like to be able to feed a reader

W

so spicily as to leave him hungering and thirsting for more at the end of every monthly meal.

whistling, and moaning through the speaking pipes of his bodily organ? I have told you it was a very queer Alexandre Dumas describes him- shock to me the other day when, with self, when inventing the plan of a a letter of introduction in his hand, work, as lying silent on his back for the artist's (not my) Philip Firmin two whole days on the deck of a walked into this room, and sat down yacht in a Mediterranean port. At in the chair opposite. In the novel of the end of the two days he arose and "Pendennis," written ten years ago, called for dinner. In those two days there is an account of a certain Costihe had built his plot. He had gan, whom I had invented (as I supmoulded a mighty clay, to be cast pose authors invent their personages presently in perennial brass. The out of scraps, heel-taps, odds and chapters, the characters, the incidents, ends of characters). I was smoking the combinations, were all arranged in a tavern parlor one night — and in the artist's brain ere he set a pen this Costigan came into the room to paper. My Pegasus won't fly, so alive the very man :- - the most reas to let me survey the field below me. markable resemblance of the printed He has no wings, he is blind of one sketches of the man, of the rude eye certainly, he is restive, stubborn, drawings in which I had depicted slow; crops a hedge when he ought him. He had the same little coat, to be galloping, or gallops when he the same battered hat, cocked on one ought to be quiet. He never will eye, the same twinkle in that eye. show off when I want him. Some- "Sir," said I, knowing him to be times he goes at a pace which surprises an old friend whom I had met in unme. Sometimes, when I most wish known regions, "sir," I said, "may him to make the running, the brute I offer you a glass of brandy and turns restive, and I am obliged to let water? "Bedad, ye may," says he, him take his own time. I wonder "and I'll sing ye a song tu.'" Of do other novel-writers experience this course he spoke with an Irish brogue. fatalism? They must go a certain Of course he had been in the army. way, in spite of themselves. I In ten minutes he pulled out an Army have been surprised at the observa- Agent's account, whereon his name tions made by some of my characters. was written. A few months after we It seems as if an occult Power was read of him in a police court. How moving the pen. The personage had I come to know him, to divine does or says something, and I ask, him? Nothing shall convince me how the dickens did he come to think that I have not seen that man in the of that? Every man has remarked world of spirits. In the world of in dreams the vast dramatic power spirits and water I know I did: but which is sometimes evinced; I won't that is a mere quibble of words. say the surprising power, for nothing was not surprised when he spoke in does surprise you in dreams. But an Irish brogue. I had had cognithose strange characters you meet zance of him before somehow. Who make instant observations of which has not felt that little shock which you never can have thought previ- arises when a person, a place, some ously. In like manner, the imagina- words in a book (there is always a tion foretells things. We spake anon collocation) present themselves to of the inflated style of some writers. you, and you know that you have What also if there is an afflated style, before met the same person, words, when a writer is like a Pythoness scene, and so forth? on her oracle tripod, and mighty words, words which he cannot help, come blowing, and bellowing, and

I

They used to call the good Sir Walter the "Wizard of the North.” What if some writer should appear

ON A PEAL OF BELLS.

who can write so enchantingly that he | dull old pages! Oh, the cares, the shall be able to call into actual life the ennui, the squabbles, the repetitions, people whom he invents? What if the old conversations over and over Mignon, and Margaret, and Goetz again! But now and again a kind von Berlichingen are alive now thought is recalled, and now and (though I don't say they are visible), again a dear memory. Yet a few and Dugald Dalgetty and Ivanhoe chapters more, and then the last: were to step in at that open window by after which, behold Finis itself come the little garden yonder? Suppose to an end, and the Infinite begun. Uncas and our noble old Leather Stocking were to glide silent in? Suppose Athos, Porthos, and Aramis should enter with a noiseless swagger, curling their mustaches? And dearest Amelia Booth, on Uncle Toby's arm; and Tittlebat Titmouse, with his hair dyed green; and all the Crummles company of comedians, with the Gil Blas troop; and Sir Roger De Coverley; and the greatest of all crazy gentlemen, the Knight of La Mancha, with his blessed squire? I say to you, I look rather wistfully towards the window, musing upon these people. Were any of them to enter, I think I should not be very much, frightened. Dear old friends what pleasant hours I have had with them! We do not see each other very often, but when we do, we are ever happy to meet. I had a capital half hour with Jacob Faithful last night; when the last sheet was corrected, when "Finis" had been written, and the printer's boy, with the copy, was safe in Green Arbor Court.

So you are gone, little printer's boy with the last scratches and corrections on the proof, and a fine flourish by way of Finis at the story's end. The last corrections? I say those last corrections seem never to be finished. A plague upon the weeds! Every day, when I walk in my own little literary garden-plot, I spy some, and should like to have a spud, and root them out. Those idle words, neighbor, are past remedy. That turning back to the old pages produces any thing but elation of mind. Would you not pay a pretty fine to be able to cancel some of them? Oh, the sad old pages, the

As some bells in a church hard by are making a great holiday clanging in the summer afternoon, I am reminded, somehow, of a July day, a garden, and a great clanging of bells years and years ago, on the very day when George IV. was crowned. I remember a little boy lying in that garden reading his first novel. It was called "The Scottish Chiefs." The little boy (who is now ancient and not little) read this book in the summerhouse of his great grandmamma. She was eighty years of age then. A most lovely and picturesque old lady, with a long tortoise-shell cane, with a little puff, or tour, of snow-white (or was it powdered?) hair under her cap, with the prettiest little black-velvet slippers and high heels you ever saw. She had a grandson, a lieutenant in the navy; son of her son, a captain in the navy; grandson of her husband, a captain in the navy. She lived for scores and scores of years in a dear little old Hampshire town inhabited by the wives, widows, daughters of navy captains, admirals, lieutenants. __Dear me! Don't I remember Mrs. Duval, widow of Admiral Duval; and the Miss Dennets, at the Great House at the other end of the town, Admiral Dennet's daughters; and the Miss Barrys, the late Captain Barry's daughters; and the good old Miss Maskews, Admiral Maskews's daughter; and that dear little Miss Norval, and the kind Miss Bookers, one of whom married Captain, now Admiral, Sir Henry Excellent, K.C.B.? Far,