them for trying their fortunes in literature. Most of
them will fail, for, as the bookseller's young man told an author once,
they have the poetic temperament, without the poetic power. Still among
these whom _Pendennis_ has tempted, in boyhood, to run away from school
to literature as Marryat has tempted others to run away to sea, there
must be some who will succeed. But an early and intense ambition is not
everything, any more than a capacity for taking pains is everything in
literature or in any art.

Some have the gift, the natural incommunicable power, without the
ambition, others have the ambition but no other gift from any Muse. This
class is the more numerous, but the smallest class of all has both the
power and the will to excel in letters. The desire to write, the love of
letters may shew itself in childhood, in boyhood, or youth, and mean
nothing at all, a mere harvest of barren blossom without fragrance or
fruit. Or, again, the concern about letters may come suddenly, when a
youth that cared for none of those things is waning, it may come when a
man suddenly finds that he has something which he really must tell. Then
he probably fumbles about for a style, and his first fresh impulses are
more or less marred by his inexperience of an art which beguiles and
fascinates others even in their school-days.

It is impossible to prophesy the success of a man of letters from his
early promise, his early tastes; as impossible as it is to predict, from
her childish grace, the beauty of a woman.

But the following remarks on How to fail in Literature are certainly
meant to discourage nobody who loves books, and has an impulse to tell a
story, or to try a song or a sermon. Discouragements enough exist in the
pursuit of this, as of all arts, crafts, and professions, without my
adding to them. Famine and Fear crouch by the portals of literature as
they crouch at the gates of the Virgilian Hades. There is no more
frequent cause of failure than doubt and dread; a beginner can scarcely
put his heart and strength into a work when he knows how long are the
odds against his victory, how difficult it is for a new man to win a
hearing, even though all editors and publishers are ever pining for a new
man. The young fellow, unknown and unwelcomed, who can sit down and give
all his best of knowledge, observation, humour, care, and fancy to a
considerable work has got courage in no common portion; he deserves to
triumph,