So much by way of not damping all neophytes equally: so much we may say
about success before talking of the easy ways that lead to failure. And
by success here is meant no glorious triumph; the laurels are not in our
thoughts, nor the enormous opulence (about a fourth of a fortunate
barrister's gains) which falls in the lap of a Dickens or a Trollope.
Faint and fleeting praise, a crown with as many prickles as roses, a
modest hardly-gained competence, a good deal of envy, a great deal of
gossip--these are the rewards of genius which constitute a modern
literary success. Not to reach the moderate competence in literature is,
for a professional man of letters of all work, something like failure.
But in poetry to-day a man may succeed, as far as his art goes, and yet
may be unread, and may publish at his own expense, or not publish at all.
He pleases himself, and a very tiny audience: I do not call that failure.
I regard failure as the goal of ignorance, incompetence, lack of common
sense, conceited dulness, and certain practical blunders now to be
explained and defined.

The most ambitious may accept, without distrust, the following advice as
to How to fail in Literature. The advice is offered by a mere critic,
and it is an axiom of the Arts that the critics "are the fellows who have
failed," or have not succeeded. The persons who really can paint, or
play, or compose seldom tell us how it is done, still less do they review
the performances of their contemporaries. That invidious task they leave
to the unsuccessful novelists. The instruction, the advice are offered
by the persons who cannot achieve performance. It is thus that all
things work together in favour of failure, which, indeed, may well appear
so easy that special instruction, however competent, is a luxury rather
than a necessary. But when we look round on the vast multitude of
writers who, to all seeming, deliberately aim at failure, who take every