one for himself.
But then they annex it so brilliantly, with such delightful
consequences for the reader, that not only is there no ground for
complaint, but the reader almost forgets that the house does not
really belong to them, and that they are merely entertaining tenants
on a short lease.

It is not that one is not grateful to writers of this type. Indeed one
is. They not only provide us with genuine entertainment, but, by the
skill born of their fine culture, they make us re-taste of the old
masters in their brilliant variations. One has no complaint against
them. Far from it. Only one wonders why they trouble to attach their own
merely personal names to their volumes, for, so far as those volumes are
concerned, there is no one to be found in them answering to the name of
the ostensible author.

Suppose, for example, that the author's name on the title-page is
"Brown." Well, so far as we can find out by reading, "Brown" might just
as well be "Green." In fact, there is no "Brown" discoverable--no
individual man behind the pen that wrote, not out of the fulness of the
heart, or the originality of the brain, from any experience or knowledge
or temperament peculiar to "Brown," but out of the fulness of what one
might call a creatively assimilated education, and by the aid of a
special talent for the combination of literary influences.

We have had a great deal of pleasure in the reading, we have admired
this and that, we may even have been astonished, but I repeat--there is
no "Brown." In private life "Brown" may be a forceful and fascinating
personality, but, so far as literature is concerned, he is merely a
"wonderful literary machine." He has been able, by his remarkable skill,
to conjure every other writer into his book--except himself. The name
"Brown" on his title-page means nothing. He has not "made his name."

The phrase "to make a name" has become so dulled with long usage that it
is worth while to pause and consider what a reality it stands for. What
it really means, of course, is that certain men and women, by the
personal force or quality of their lives, have succeeded in charging
their names--names given them originally haphazard, as names are given
to all of us--with a permanent significance as unmistakable as that
belonging to the commonest noun. The name "Byron" has a meaning as clear
and unmistakable as the word "mutton." The words "dog" and "cat" have a
meaning hardly more cle