So much for some of those who have been “Authors by Profession” in one of the twofold capacities which Guthrie designed, that of writing for a minister; the other, that of writing for the bookseller, though far more honourable, is sufficiently calamitous.
In commercial times, the hope of profit is always a stimulating, but a degrading motive; it dims the clearest intellect, it stills the proudest feelings. Habit and prejudice will soon reconcile even genius to the work of money, and to avow the motive without a blush. “An author by profession,” at once ingenious and ingenuous, declared that, “till fame appears to be worth more than money, he would always prefer money to fame.” Johnson had a notion that there existed no motive for writing but money! Yet, crowned heads have sighed with the ambition of authorship, though this great master of the 13 human mind could suppose that on this subject men were not actuated either by the love of glory or of pleasure! Fielding, an author of great genius and of “the profession,” in one of his “Covent-garden Journals” asserts, that “An author, in a country where there is no public provision for men of genius, is not obliged to be a more disinterested patriot than any other. Why is he whose livelihood is in his pen a greater monster in using it to serve himself, than he who uses his tongue for the same purpose?”
But it is a very important question to ask, is this “livelihood in the pen” really such? Authors drudging on in obscurity, and enduring miseries which can never close but with their life—shall this be worth even the humble designation of a “livelihood?” I am not now combating with them whether their taskwork degrades them, but whether they are receiving an equivalent for the violation of their genius, for the weight of the fetters they are wearing, and for the entailed miseries which form an author’s sole legacies to his widow and his children. Far from me is the wish to degrade literature by the inquiry; but it will be useful to many a youth of promising talent, who is impatient to abandon all professions for this one, to consider well the calamities in which he will most probably participate.
Among “Authors by Profession” who has displayed a more fruitful genius, and exercised more intense industry, with a loftier sense of his independence, than Smollett? But look into his life and enter into his feelings, and you will be shocked at the disparity of his situation with the genius of the man. His life was a succession of struggles, vexations, and disappointments, yet of success in his writings. Smollett, who is a great poet, though he has written little in verse, and whose rich genius composed the most original pictures of human life, was compelled by his wants to debase his name by selling it to voyages and translations, which he never could have read. When he had worn himself down in the service of the public or the booksellers, there remained not, of all his slender remunerations, in the last stage of life, sufficient to convey him to a cheap country and a restorative air on the Continent. The father may have thought himself fortunate, that the daughter whom he loved with more than common affection was no more to share in his wants; but the husband had by his side the faithful companion of his life, left without 14 a wreck of fortune. Smollett, gradually perishing in a foreign land,[8] neglected by an admiring public, and without fresh resources from the booksellers, who were receiving the income of his works, threw out his injured feelings in the character of Bramble; the warm generosity of his temper, but not his genius, seemed fleeting with his breath. In a foreign land his widow marked by a plain monument the spot of his burial, and she perished in solitude! Yet Smollett dead—soon an ornamented column is raised at the place of his birth,[9] while the grave of the author seemed to multiply the editions of his works. There are indeed grateful feelings in the public at large for a favourite author; but the awful testimony of those feelings, by its gradual progress, must appear beyond the grave! They visit the column consecrated by his name, and his features are most loved, most venerated, in the bust.
Smollett himself shall be the historian of his own heart; this most successful “Author by Profession,” who, for his subsistence, composed masterworks of genius, and drudged in the toils of slavery, shall himself tell us what happened, and describe that state between life and death, partaking of both, which obscured his faculties and sickened his lofty spirit.
“Had some of those who were pleased to call themselves my friends been at any pains to deserve the character, and told me ingenuously what I had to expect in the capacity of an author, when I first professed myself of that venerable fraternity, I should in all probability have spared myself the incredible labour and chagrin I have since undergone.”
As a relief from literary labour, Smollett once went to revisit his family, and to embrace the mother he loved; but such was the irritation of his mind and the infirmity of his health, exhausted by the hard labours of authorship, that he never passed a more weary summer, nor ever found himself so incapable of indulging the warmest emotions of his heart. 15 On his return, in a letter, he gave this melancholy narrative of himself:—“Between friends, I am now convinced that my brain was in some measure affected; for I had a kind of Coma Vigil upon me from April to November, without intermission. In consideration of this circumstance, I know you will forgive all my peevishness and discontent; tell Mrs. Moore that with regard to me, she has as yet seen nothing but the wrong side of the tapestry.” Thus it happens in the life of authors, that they whose comic genius diffuses cheerfulness, create a pleasure which they cannot themselves participate.
The Coma Vigil may be described by a verse of Shakspeare:—
| Still-waking sleep! that is not what it is! |
Of praise and censure, says Smollett, in a letter to Dr. Moore, “Indeed I am sick of both, and wish to God my circumstances would allow me to consign my pen to oblivion.” A wish, as fervently repeated by many “Authors by Profession,” who are not so fully entitled as was Smollett to write when he chose, or to have lived in quiet for what he had written. An author’s life is therefore too often deprived of all social comfort whether he be the writer for a minister, or a bookseller—but their case requires to be stated.
THE CASE OF AUTHORS STATED,
INCLUDING THE HISTORY OF LITERARY PROPERTY.
Johnson has dignified the booksellers as “the patrons of literature,” which was generous in that great author, who had written well and lived but ill all his life on that patronage. Eminent booksellers, in their constant intercourse with the most enlightened class of the community, that is, with the best authors and the best readers, partake of the intelligence around them; their great capitals, too, are productive of good and evil in literature; useful when they carry on great works, and pernicious when they sanction indifferent ones. Yet are they but commercial men. A trader can never be deemed a patron, for it would be romantic to purchase what is not saleable; and where no favour is conferred, there is no patronage.
Authors continue poor, and booksellers become opulent; an extraordinary result! Booksellers are not agents for authors, 16 but proprietors of their works; so that the perpetual revenues of literature are solely in the possession of the trade.
Is it then wonderful that even successful authors are indigent? They are heirs to fortunes, but by a strange singularity they are disinherited at their birth; for, on the publication of their works, these cease to be their own property. Let that natural property be secured, and a good book would be an inheritance, a leasehold or a freehold, as you choose it; it might at least last out a generation, and descend to the author’s blood, were they permitted to live on their father’s glory, as in all other property they do on his industry.[10] Something of this nature has been instituted in France, where the descendants of Corneille and Molière retain a claim on the theatres whenever the