and may be taken up at any time without a moment's delay. If a man can
command a table, a chair, pen, paper, and ink, he can commence his trade
as literary man. It is thus that aspirants generally do commence it. A
man may or may not have another employment to back him, or means of his
own; or,--as was the case with Thackeray, when, after his first
misadventure, he had to look about him for the means of living,--he may
have nothing but his intellect and his friends. But the idea comes to
the man that as he has the pen and ink, and time on his hand, why
should he not write and make money?

It is an idea that comes to very many men and women, old as well as
young,--to many thousands who at last are crushed by it, of whom the
world knows nothing. A man can make the attempt though he has not a coat
fit to go out into the street with; or a woman, though she be almost in
rags. There is no apprenticeship wanted. Indeed there is no room for
such apprenticeship. It is an art which no one teaches; there is no
professor who, in a dozen lessons, even pretends to show the aspirant
how to write a book or an article. If you would be a watchmaker, you
must learn; or a lawyer, a cook, or even a housemaid. Before you can
clean a horse you must go into the stable, and begin at the beginning.
Even the cab-driving tiro must sit for awhile on the box, and learn
something of the streets, before he can ply for a fare. But the literary
beginner rushes at once at the top rung of his ladder;--as though a
youth, having made up his mind to be a clergyman, should demand, without
preliminary steps, to be appointed Bishop of London. That he should be
able to read and write is presumed, and that only. So much may be
presumed of everyone, and nothing more is wanted.

In truth nothing more is wanted,--except those inner lights as to which,
so many men live and die without having learned whether they possess