tirely in his writing, and if he feels that he may without imprudence
give himself to the practice of the beloved art, then he may formally
adopt it as a profession. But he must not hope for much monetary
reward. A successful writer of plays may make a fortune, a novelist or
a journalist of the first rank may earn a handsome income; but to
achieve conspicuous mundane success in literature, a certain degree of
good fortune is almost more important than genius, or even than talent.
Ability by itself, even literary ability of a high order, is not
sufficient; it is necessary to have a vogue, to create or satisfy a
special demand, to hit the taste of the age. But the writer of
belles-lettres, the literary writer pure and simple, can hardly hope to
earn a living wage, unless he is content to do, and indeed fortunate
enough to obtain, a good deal of hackwork as well. He must be ready to
write reviews and introductions; to pour out occasional articles, to
compile, to edit, to select; and the chances are that if his livelihood
depends upon his labour, he will have little of the tranquillity, the
serenity, the leisure, upon the enjoyment of which the quality of the
best work depends. John Addington Symonds makes a calculation, in one
of his published letters, to the effect that his entire earnings for
the years in which he had been employed in writing his history of the
Italian Renaissance, had been at the rate of about L100 a year, from
which probably nearly half had to be subtracted for inevitable
incidental expenses, such as books and travelling. The conclusion is
that unless a man has private resources, or a sufficiently robust
constitution to be able to carry on his literary work side by side with
his professional work, he can hardly afford to turn his attention to
belles-lettres.

Nowadays literature has become a rather fashionable pursuit than
otherwise. Times have changed since Gray refused to accept money for
his publications, and gave it to be understood that he was an eccentric
gentleman who wrote solely for his own amusement; since the inheritor
of Rokeby found among the family portraits of the magnates that adorned
his walls a picture of the novelist Richardson, and was at the pains of
adding a ribbon and a star, in order to turn it into a portrait of Sir
Robert Walpole, that he might free his gallery from such degrading
associations.

But now a social personage is hardly ashamed of writing a book, of
travels, perh