it should (if possible) be a little dull into the bargain. I know
that good work sometimes hits; but, with my hand on my heart, I
think it is by an accident. And I know also that good work must
succeed at last; but that is not the doing of the public; they are
only shamed into silence or affectation. I do not write for the
public; I do write for money, a nobler deity; and most of all for
myself, not perhaps any more noble, but both more intelligent and
nearer home.

Let us tell each other sad stories of the bestiality of the beast
whom we feed. What he likes is the newspaper; and to me the press
is the mouth of a sewer, where lying is professed as from an
university chair, and everything prurient, and ignoble, and
essentially dull, finds its abode and pulpit. I do not like
mankind; but men, and not all of these - and fewer women. As for
respecting the race, and, above all, that fatuous rabble of
burgesses called 'the public,' God save me from such irreligion! -
that way lies disgrace and dishonour. There must be something
wrong in me, or I would not be popular.

This is perhaps a trifle stronger than my sedate and permanent
opinion. Not much, I think. As for the art that we practise, I
have never been able to see why its professors should be respected.
They chose the primrose path; when they found it was not all
primroses, but some of it brambly, and much of it uphill, they
began to think and to speak of themselves as holy martyrs. But a
man is never martyred in any honest sense in the pursuit of his
pleasure; and DELIRIUM TREMENS has more of the honour of the cross.
We were full of the pride of life, and chose, like prostitutes, to
live by a pleasure. We should be paid if we give the pleasure we