or they can also unmake him, and I feel pretty safe in
saying that I do not think they can. The Afreet once out of the bottle
can never be coaxed back or cudgelled back; and the author whom the
newspapers have made cannot be unmade by the newspapers. They consign
him to oblivion with a rumor that fills the land, and they keep
visiting him there with an uproar which attracts more and more notice
to him. An author who has long enjoyed their favor, suddenly and
rather mysteriously loses it, through his opinions on certain matters
of literary taste, say. For the space of five or six years he is
denounced with a unanimity and an incisive vigor that ought to convince
him there is something wrong. If he thinks it is his censors, he
clings to his opinions with an abiding constance, while ridicule,
obloquy, caricature, burlesque, critical refutation and personal
detraction follow unsparingly upon every expression, for instance, of
his belief that romantic fiction is the highest form of fiction, and
that the base, sordid, photographic, commonplace school of Tolstoy,
Tourguenief, Zola, Hardy, and James, are unworthy a moment's comparison
with the school of Rider Haggard. All this ought certainly to unmake
the author in question, and strew his disjecta membra wide over the
realm of oblivion. But this is not really the effect. Slowly but
surely the clamor dies away, and the author, without relinquishing one
of his wicked opinions, or in anywise showing himself repentant,
remains apparently whole; and he even returns in a measure to the old
kindness: not indeed to the earlier day of perfectly smooth things, but
certainly to as much of it as he merits.

I would not have the young author, from this imaginary case, believe
that it is well either to court or to defy the good opinion of the
press. In fact, it will not only be better taste, but it will be
better business for him to keep it altogether out of his mind. There
is only one whom he can safely try to please, and that is himself. If
he does this he will very probably please other people; but if he does
not please himself he may be sure that he will not please them; the
book which he has not enjoyed writing, no one will enjoy reading.
Still, I would not have him attach too little consequence to the
influence of the press. I should say, let him take the celebrity it
gives him gratefully but not too seriously; let him reflect that he is
often the necessity rather than the