er went forth to sow, it will be remembered, that which soon
sprang up as soon withered away. It was the seed that was content to
"bring forth fruit with patience" that finally won out and survived the
others.

These humble, old-fashioned illustrations occur to me as I apply myself
to the consideration of the question provoked by the lightning
over-production of modern fiction and modern literature generally: the
question of the flourishing longevity of the fiction of the past as
compared with the swift oblivion which seems almost invariably to
over-take the much-advertised "masterpieces" of the present.

I read somewhere a ballade asking--where are the "best sellers" of
yesteryear? The ballad-maker might well ask, and one might re-echo with
Villon: "Mother of God, ah! where are they?" During the last twenty
years they have been as the sands on the seashore for multitude, yet I
think one would be hard set to name a dozen of them whose titles even
are still on the lips of men--whereas several quieter books published
during that same period, unheralded by trumpet or fire-balloon, are seen
serenely to be ascending to a sure place in the literary firmament.

What can be the reason? Can the decay of these forgotten phenomena of
modern fiction, so lavishly crowned with laurels manufactured in the
offices of their own publishers, have anything to do with the hectic
rapidity of their growth, and may there be some truth in the supposition
that the novels, and books generally, that live longest are those that
took the longest to write, or, at all events underwent the longest
periods of gestation?

Some fifteen years or so ago one of the most successful manufacturers of
best sellers was Guy Boothby, whose _Dr. Nikola_ is perhaps still
remembered. Unhappily he did not live long to enjoy the fruits of his
industrious dexterity. I bring his case to mind as typical of the modern
machine-made methods.

I had read in a newspaper that he did his "writing" by phonograph, and
chancing to meet him somewhere, asked him about it. His response was to
invite me to come down to his charming country house on the Thames and
see how he did it. Boothby was a fine, manly fellow, utterly without
"side" or any illusions as to the quality of his work. He loved good
literature too well--Walter Pater, incongruously enough, was one of his
idols--to dream that he could make it. Nor was the making of literature
by any means his first preoccupation, as h