ion of the novelist into the artisan. There seemed, he
pursued, a fixed formula for the manufacture of a work of fiction, to be
studied and practised like any other. Literature was degraded from an
art to a poor sort of science, in the practical application of which
thousands were seen prospering; for the immense output of our press
represented the industry of hundreds and thousands. A book was
concocted, according to a patent recipe, advertised, and sold like any
other nostrum, and perhaps the time was already here when it was no
longer more creditable to be known as the author of a popular novel than
as the author of a popular medicine, a Pain-killer, a Soothing Syrup, a
Vegetable Compound, a Horse Liniment, or a Germicide. Was it possible,
he asked, for a reader of the last book selling a hundred thousand
copies to stand in the loving or thrilling awe of the author that we
used to feel for Longfellow and Tennyson, for Emerson and Carlyle, for
Hawthorne and George Eliot, for Irving and Scott, or for any of their
great elders or youngers? He repeated that perhaps authorship had worked
its worshippers too hard, but there was no doubt that their worship was
a genuine devotion. For at least a hundred and fifty years it had been
eagerly offered in a full acceptance of the Schiller superstition that
at the sharing of the earth the poet, representing authorship, had been
so much preoccupied with higher things that he had left the fleshpots
and the loaves and fishes to others, and was to be compensated with a
share of the divine honors paid to Jove himself. From Goethe to Carlyle,
what a long roll of gods, demigods, and demisemigods it was! It might
have been bad for the deities, and the philosopher rather thought it
was, but burning incense on the different shrines was an excellent thing
for the votaries, and kept them out of all sorts of mischiefs, low
pleasures, and vain amusements. Whether that was really so or not, the
doubt remained whether authorship was not now a creed outworn. Did
tender maids and virtuous matrons still cherish the hope of some day
meeting their literary idols in the flesh? Did generous youth aspire to
see them merely at a distance, and did doting sires teach their children
that it was an epoch-making event when a great poet or novelist visited
the country; or when they passed afar, did they whip some favored boy,
as the father of Benvenuto Cellini whipped him at sight of a salamander
in the fire that