seems to have very little to do with an author's popularity,
though ever so much with his notoriety. Those strange
subterranean fellows who never come to the surface in the
newspapers, except for a contemptuous paragraph at long
intervals, outsell the famousest of the celebrities, and secretly
have their horses and yachts and country seats, while immodest
merit is left to get about on foot and look up summer board at
the cheaper hotels. That is probably right, or it would not
happen; it seems to be in the general scheme, like millionairism
and pauperism; but it becomes a question, then, whether the
newspapers, with all their friendship for literature, and their
actual generosity to literary men, can really help one much to
fortune, however much they help one to fame. Such a question is
almost too dreadful, and though I have asked it, I will not
attempt to answer it. I would much rather consider the question
whether if the newspapers can make an author they can also unmake
him, and I feel pretty safe in saying that I do not think they
can. The Afreet once out of the bottle can never be coaxed back
or cudgelled back; and the author whom the newspapers have made
cannot be unmade by the newspapers. They consign him to oblivion
with a rumor that fills the land, and they keep visiting him
there with an uproar which attracts more and more notice to him.
An author who has long enjoyed their favor, suddenly and rather
mysteriously loses it, through his opinions on certain matters of
literary taste, say. For the space of five or six years he is
denounced with a unanimity and an incisive vigor that ought to
convince him there is something wrong. If he thinks it is his
censors, he clings to his opinions with an abiding constance,
while ridicule, obloquy, caricature, burlesque, critical
refutation and personal detraction follow unsparingly upon every