experience--in fact 'nothing' in it; and though, like myself, you may
pay an Oxford professor a thousand a year to correct your proofs, you
may still miss immortality.

To these intellectual and general equipments you add goodness of heart,
sincerity of conviction, and martyrdom for your opinions; you are, it
would seem, like many others of us, the best fellow and greatest man of
your acquaintance. Permit me to remind you that we are not talking of
goodness of heart, of strength or beauty of character, but of success,
which is a thing apart, a fine art in itself.

You confess that you are somewhat unpractical: you expect
others--hard-worked journalists who never met you--to tell you what to
read, how to form your style, and how 'to get into the magazines.' You
are, you say, with something of pride, but a poor business man. That is
a pity, for nearly every successful literary man of the day, and
particularly the novelists, are excellent business men. Indeed, the
history of literature all round has proved that the men who have been
masters of words have also been masters of things--masters of the facts
of life for which those words stand. Many writers have mismanaged their
affairs from idleness and indifference, but few from incapacity. Leigh
Hunt boasted that he could never master the multiplication-table.
Perhaps that accounts for his comparative failure as a writer.
Incompetence in one art is far from being a guarantee of competency in
another, and a man is all the more likely to make a name if he is able
to make a living--though, judging from Coleridge, it seems a good plan
to let another hard-worked man support one's wife and children. On the
other hand, though business faculty is a great deal, it is not
everything: for a man may be as punctual and methodical as Southey, and
yet miss the prize of his high calling, or as generally 'impossible' as