pastime; who keeps a prolific mind in a sort of corn-sieve and lightly
shakes a bushel of it out sometimes in an odd half-hour after
breakfast. It would amaze their incredulity beyond all measure to
be told that such elements as patience, study, punctuality,
determination, self-denial, training of mind and body, hours of
application and seclusion to produce what they read in seconds,
enter in such a career ... correction and recorrection in the blotted
manuscript; consideration; new observations; the patient massing of
many reflections, experiences, and imaginings for one minute purpose;
and the patient separation from the heap of all the fragments that
will unite to serve it--these would be unicorns and griffins to
them--fables altogether.

And as it was, a quarter of a century ago, when those words were
written, so it is now: the phrase of 'light literature' as applied to
fiction having once been invented, has stuck, with a vengeance, to those
who profess it.

Yet to 'make the thing that is not as the thing that is' is not (though
it may seem to be the same thing) so easy as lying.

Among a host of letters received in connection with an article published
in the _Nineteenth Century_, entitled 'The Literary Calling and its
Future,' and which testify in a remarkable manner to the pressing need
(therein alluded to) of some remunerative vocation among the so-called
educated classes, there are many which are obviously written under the
impression that Dogberry's view of writing coming 'by nature' is
especially true of the writing of fiction. Because I ventured to hint
that the study of Greek was not essential to the calling of a
story-teller, or of a contributor to the periodicals, or even of a