with a good deal of common-sense, in that scene in _Pendennis_ where Pen
and Warrington walk home together from the Fleet prison, after hearing
Captain Shandon read that brilliant prospectus of the _Pall Mall Gazette_,
which he had written for bookseller Bungay, and for which that gentleman
disbursed him a £5 note on the spot. Pen, you will remember, was full of
the oppressions of genius, of Apollo being tied down to such an Admetus as
Bungay. Warrington, however, took a maturer view of the matter.

'A fiddlestick about men of genius!' he exclaimed, 'I deny that there are
so many geniuses as people who whimper about the fate of men of letters
assert there are. There are thousands of clever fellows in the world who
could, if they would, turn verses, write articles, read books, and deliver
a judgment upon them; the talk of professional critics and writers is not
a whit more brilliant, or profound, or amusing than that of any other
society of educated people. If a lawyer, or a soldier, or a parson outruns
his income, and does not pay his bills, he must go to gaol; and an author
must go too. If an author fuddles himself, I don't know why he should be
let off a headache the next morning--if he orders a coat from the
tailor's, why he shouldn't pay for it....'

Dr. Johnson, who had no great reason to be prejudiced in their favour,
defined booksellers as 'the patrons of literature,' and M. Anatole France
has recently said that 'a great publisher is a kind of Minister for
_belles-lettres_.' Such definitions are, doubtless, prophecies of the
ideal rather than descriptions of the actual. Yet, fairly dealt with, the
history of publishing would show a much nearer living up to them on the
part of publishers than the poets and their sentimental sympathisers are
inclined to admit. We hear a great deal of Milton getting £10 for
_Paradise Lost_, and the Tonsons riding in their carriage, but seldom of
Cottle adventuring thirty guineas on Coleridge's early poems, or the