he had never felt. A quiet and
thoughtful observer of life, his descriptions were the more vivid,
because his own first impressions were not yet worn away. His experience
had sunk deep; not on the arid surface of matured age, but in the
fresh soil of youthful emotions. Another reason, perhaps, that obtained
success for his essay was, that he had more varied and more elaborate
knowledge than young authors think it necessary to possess. He did not,
like Cesarini, attempt to make a show of words upon a slender capital of
ideas. Whether his style was eloquent or homely; it was still in him
a faithful transcript of considered and digested thought. A third
reason--and I dwell on these points not more to elucidate the career of
Maltravers than as hints which may be useful to others--a third reason
why Maltravers obtained a prompt and favourable reception from the
public was, that he had not hackneyed his peculiarities of diction
and thought in that worst of all schools for the literary novice--the
columns of a magazine. Periodicals form an excellent mode of
communication between the public and an author _already_ established,
who has lost the charm of novelty, but gained the weight of acknowledged
reputation; and who, either upon politics or criticism, seeks for
frequent and continuous occasions to enforce his peculiar theses and
doctrines. But, upon the young writer, this mode of communication, if
too long continued, operates most injuriously both as to his future
prospects and his own present taste and style. With respect to the
first, it familiarises the public to his mannerism (and all writers
worth reading have mannerism) in a form to which the said public are not
inclined to attach much weight. He forestalls in a few months what ought
to be the effect of years; namely, the wearying a world soon nauseated
with the _toujours perdrix_. With respect to the last, it induces a man
to write for momentary effects; to study a false smartness of style and
reasoning; to bound his ambition of durability to the last day of the
month; to expect immediate returns for labour; to recoil at the "hope
deferred" of serious works on which judgment is slowly formed. The
man of talent who begins young at periodicals, and goes on long, has
generally something crude and stunted about both his compositions and
his celebrity. He grows the oracle of small coteries; and we can rarely
get out of the impression that he is cockneyfied and conventional.