them or not. Practice, industry, study of literature, cultivation of
taste, and the rest, will of course lend their aid, will probably be
necessary before high excellence is attained. But the instances are not
to seek,--are at the fingers of us all,--in which the first uninstructed
effort has succeeded. A boy, almost, or perhaps an old woman, has sat
down and the book has come, and the world has read it, and the
booksellers have been civil and have written their cheques. When all
trades, all professions, all seats at offices, all employments at which
a crust can be earned, are so crowded that a young man knows not where
to look for the means of livelihood, is there not an attraction in this
which to the self-confident must be almost invincible? The booksellers
are courteous and write their cheques, but that is not half the whole?
_Monstrari digito!_ That is obtained. The happy aspirant is written of
in newspapers, or, perhaps, better still, he writes of others. When the
barrister of forty-five has hardly got a name beyond Chancery Lane, this
glorious young scribe, with the first down on his lips, has printed his
novel and been talked about.

The temptation is irresistible, and thousands fall into it. How is a man
to know that he is not the lucky one or the gifted one? There is the
table and there the pen and ink. Among the unfortunate he who fails
altogether and from the first start is not the most unfortunate. A short
period of life is wasted, and a sharp pang is endured. Then the
disappointed one is relegated to the condition of life which he would
otherwise have filled a little earlier. He has been wounded, but not
killed, or even maimed. But he who has a little success, who succeeds in
earning a few halcyon, but, ah! so dangerous guineas, is drawn into a
trade from which he will hardly escape till he be driven from it, if he
come out alive, by sheer hunger. He hangs on till the guineas become
crowns and shillings,--till some sad record of his life, made when he