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Available with prior consent of the CELT programme for purposes of academic research and teaching only. CELT: Corpus of Electronic Texts The electronic text represents the edited version. Editorial footnotes are included using The text has been checked and proof-read once. The electronic text represents the edited text. Direct speech is rendered Soft hyphens are silently removed. When a hyphenated word (hard or soft) crosses a page-break or line-break, the page-break and line-break are marked after the completion of the hyphenated word. There are no dates. Names of persons and literary works cited by Sheehan are tagged. Places are not tagged. In accepting the invitation of this Society to read a paper for its members, I selected this subject — the Literary Life — as one that might be made not only interesting, but useful. Because it is one about which ceaseless interrogations are put from young and old aspirants, the form of question generally touching the feasibility of making a living by literature, or, at least, of attracting, ever so little, the regards of our fellow men. It is found that some of these queries are pathetic; some, unreasonable; some, pitiful; none, for reasons I shall afterwards detail, altogether condemnable. The replies, given readily by those who have failed and those who have succeeded, are pitched in the same sad key of uniformity. With singular unanimity they seem to warn off all aspirants from a dangerous and thorny path. Some of these sad verdicts are familiar to you, like the mournful lines of But his successors in modern times, when it is generally presumed an author's life is happier, seem to repeat the same sad threnody. To a correspondent who wrote him on the subject And to And, in still more recent times, a writer, whose sad experience lends such pathetic and mournful interest to his words, writes: — These are sad words, wrung from lips which had tasted disappointment and despair. Are they borne out by facts and experience? Yes! alas! they are only too true. There is no profession, whose borders are strewn with so many wrecks as this of literature; as there is no profession for whose labours honours and rewards come so tardily — very often never come at all, or only come when it is too late. I know you might quote against me such isolated successes as that of Were I a young man, I should certainly not adopt
crossing-sweeping is better than literature.
that he had never heard a madder proposal. It was only one degree less foolish than if he were to throw himself from the top of the Monument in the hope of flying.
Na, na, that winna do. Ye'd better stick to your profession, young man. It's time enough to think of literature when you've cleared your own mind, and have something to say.
Innumerable are the men and women now writing for bread, who have not the least chance of finding in such work a permanent livelihood. They took to writing, because they knew not what else to do; or because the literary calling tempted them by its independence, and its dazzling prizes. They will hang on to the squalid profession, their earnings eked out by begging and borrowing, until it is too late for them to do anything else — and then? With a lifetime of dread experience behind me, I say that he who encourages any young man or woman to look for his living to literature, commits no less than a crime.
And
And what shall we say of the heart-sickness, the disappointment, the despair, that seem to have ever dogged the feet of the great thinkers of the world? History is black with the dread record. Even in our own day I know nothing more pathetic than the futile attempts of the authors of great works to obtain a little recognition; of their futile appeals to publishers and public, to give them just one chance. Think of
Such, in brief, is the history of this sad but glorious fraternity. And we need hardly wonder that those who have had experience of the vicissitudes and changes, and been embittered by the uncertainties and sadness of the literary life, should warn off all young postulants who might be modest or humble enough to plead for advice.
But it may be asked how does it happen, that with all these terrible facts and experiences before their eyes, so many are yet anxious to be enrolled in this brotherhood of pain and sorrow? What is the strange fascination which literature exercises over every one who has come under the spell of great authors? It is quite certain that there are few men or women of education and culture who do not aspire to the glory of seeing their thoughts, sentiments, and aspirations in print. The number of students who go to the Bar, or to medicine, or to business, or to engineering, is limited. The number of young ladies who desire to enter the learned professions, or to earn an independent livelihood as teachers, governesses, or Civil Servants, is limited. The number of literary aspirants is legion.
I think the motives which underlie or create this fascination for letters, may be summed up thus: —
Admiration for great authors and the desire to imitate them; a passionate love for books, and the ambition to create something similar; the craving for what is believed to be a quiet, uneventful, unimpassioned life; the fancy that a life of literature is absolutely free from care; the rapture of composition; the desire of fame; the passion, so universal, for making money as speedily and as easily as possible.
Some of these methods are noble and honourable; some unwise and unreasonable; some base and dishonourable under certain aspects. We shall dispose of these latter first.
I do not for a moment believe, or aver, that it is either unworthy or dishonouring to write for money or for fame. There is no reason whatever why an author should not seek to exchange his services as poet, novelist, essayist, historian for remuneration similar and equal to that which accrues to the doctor, the barrister, or the commercial speculator. If he wishes to coin his brains, and mint them into gold, there is neither simony nor sacrilege in doing so. The pen of the writer is not more sacred than the scalpel of the doctor or the artist's pencil. Yet there is a certain class of people who seem to think that it is quite a degradation to write for money; and even the legislation
more.
But where the degradation certainly comes in is when an author, avaricious of money or ambitious of fame, is prepared to use, or abuse, his talents to please the morbid passions of the multitude. A writer who appeals to passion, sensual or other; who panders to religious prejudice, or turns a sacred talent into a political agency; the author who sets the maiden fancies wallowing in the troughs of Zolaism,
or perverts the minds, or destroys the principles of the young, should meet with no mercy.
So far for the principle. But can an author make money? Is it a lucrative profession? We have already answered that question. For the vast majority of writers, who hope to make a living by it, it is the source of unspeakable disappointment. There is only one safe advice for young people who are smitten by a passion for literature, and that is: Let it be your pleasure, but not your profession. It is an excellent walking-stick; but an exceedingly bad crutch.
Again, I cannot see why an author should not write for
the last infirmity of noble minds
; but it is an honourable infirmity. And it sometimes takes a shape that makes it akin to the zeal of an apostle. For there cannot be a doubt that many writers take up their pens, not for gain, sordid or otherwise; not for life-advancement, but purely with the desire of influencing the minds of many unto good — the desire of creating in other souls the high ideas and lofty principles with which they themselves are animated. To wish to have one's name bruited abroad in the press and amongst the public may be a paltry thing, but it is intelligible. To desire to influence the world by the magnetism of great ideas; to desire to form even one link in the electric chain that stretches down through the ages, magnetising generation after generation with thoughts that thrill and words that burn — this, so far from being ignoble, may assume the sacredness of a vocation and an apostleship. Cast forth thy Act, thy Word, into the ever-living, everworking universe; it is a seed grain that cannot die; unnoticed to-day, it will be found flourishing as a Banyan-grove after a thousand years.
This naturally leads us to consider the higher and more sacred motives that influence so many in their choice of literature as a profession. The first of these I have specified as a love of books and their authors. The highest worship is the worship of imitation. Whosoever sits at the feet of Gamaliel seeks to become like unto Gamaliel. We like to create what we admire; and whoever has a favourite author or authors, dreams of one day becoming a source of light and leading unto others, as these authors are to himself. And behind that passion for imitation is the instinct that seems to pervade the whole universe; — that mysterious and sublime impulse which seems almost like an attribute of the Divinity, imparted in measure to finite beings — the instinct of creation or production. You see it everywhere: in the atom, in the mineral, in the cell, in the plant, in the animal. The same tremendous process that rounds a nebula into a sun, carries the pollen of a flower from plant to plant on the wings of a bee or a butterfly; and the same mysterious instinct that vitalizes a seedling compelled
under the influence of insanity an ignorant person will make perfect Latin verses; a woman will sing Latin hymns and verses entirely unknown to her.
But I shall be met at once by the objection that all this instinct, like the blind instincts of Nature, leads but to sad and melancholy waste; that the process of natural selection holds in literature as in everything else; that only the fittest and noblest and strong things survive; and that hence it would be much better for poetic young ladies to knit stockings than to make verses; and for moon-struck young men to take up a spade or a hoe, and let the pen alone. True, there is that terrible and unaccountable waste in Nature as in Art. It was the one thing that troubled the intellectual serenity of
It is not the origin of things, but the utter depravity of Nature in sacrificing with criminal and profuse prodigality all that is created with so much pain that forms the cardinal puzzle and problem of existence. If the elm-tree produces 300,000 seeds in a year, and only one seed becomes an elm; if but one seed of 200,000 of the purple orchis reaches maturity, we pronounce Nature a shocking wastrel. But it does not follow that the seedling that fructified was more vigorous and healthful than the thousands that perished. Their environments were different, and they fell under the other instinct of destruction. And I say that it is quite a mistake to suppose that in Literature out of the countless poems, and essays, and dramas, that have been evolved from the creative instinct of the intellect only the best have survived. I do not wish to be misunderstood. I do not affirm that any greater epic than the
mortal lullabies of pain—
What then are we to say? This — that inasmuch as it appears to be the law of Nature to create prodigally, by virtue of the secret and impervious instinct that prompts creation; and that, inasmuch as these creations, again obeying the behests of another secret and imperative law, always round to perfection, even though the vast proportion are doomed to wanton destruction, and perhaps only one solitary specimen
a thing of beauty, and a joy for ever.
Besides, in all this there is the eternal law of Chance. The same Chance that places a seedling in the beak of a migratory bird and bids it be carried to some ocean-beaten rock, there to create a luxuriant vegetation, may also discover and reveal some hidden beauty and glory in literature.
Night.And there is no writer, however humble, who may not stumble on an immortal line, and find a discriminating critic to recognise it. There is a systole and diastole in all human affairs: and the idols of this generation may strew the roads of the next. At one time all Europe went mad over
This leads me quite naturally to the next motive I have particularized as an attraction to the literary life — the rapture of composition!
Now it is quite true that for the most part authors have to whip and spur their brains until the jaded or helpless faculties stir themselves reluctantly to work. Very often authors have to write against time to complete an engagement or to meet the season when books are most in demand. This is the drudgery of literature; and such work, under such circumstances, is mostly poor and transitory. But there come moments in the life of every author — at least, of every author of distinction — when they seem to be lifted above the earth, and to see a sudden opening in the firmament, revealing glimpses of Heaven. Such moments of ecstasy are few and intermittent. They cannot be foreseen or anticipated. They do not come and go with the rhythmic swing of the sea; but capriciously and at unexpected times, flashing sudden lights on the mind, and as quickly snapping
and: —
No mere cudgelling of brains could ever elicit that line: —
Beside a pumice isle in Baise's bay,
or that expression: —
The sapless foliage of the Ocean.
And when
or in his
he must have experienced something like the levitation of spiritualists, and floated in the air.
And when Carlyle said to his wife, on the completion of his
There! They have not had for many years a book that came so flaming hot from the heart of any man.It was his rapture at having perfected an immortal work, and an ecstasy of defiance to a heedless or stupid public.
But, in the life of men of genius, these, alas! are transitory, sudden, intermittent emotions. As a rule, authors, especially of the higher type, are very unhappy mortals. Whether it be the perpetual mental strain producing nervousness and irritability; or whether it be the disappointment of baffled hopes; or whether it be penury, want, or neglect, that shall be alleged as causes, it is quite certain that a literary life is mostly an unhappy one. Sudden raptures mean chronic depression; and the ecstasies of a moment scarcely counterbalance the infelicities of a lifetime. If it had pleased God to give you a brain, the grey cortex of which is so dull and unelastic that no external impression will strike a spark from it, thank God for the favour! Or if you are endowed with such faculties that you can gaze for hours stupidly into the fire; or lean over a village bridge and watch the waters curling beneath; or consume infinite tobacco, whilst engaged in the laudable object of killing man's worst enemy — Time — thank God for it! But if you are dowered with that nervous irritability called genius, throwing out thoughts from the brain as swiftly as the crystal drops are flung from a mill-wheel ah, well, you may know, from time to time, what is meant by the ecstasy and rapture of composition; but you will never know what happiness means in this life. Where thou beholdest Genius,
says
there thou beholdest, too, the martyr's crown.
Hence, unquestionably, a literary life is for the most part an unhappy life; because, if you have genius, you must suffer the penalty of genius; and, if you have only talent, there are so many cares and worries incidental to the circumstances of men of letters, as to make life exceedingly miserable. Besides the pangs of composition, and the continuous disappointment which a true artist feels at his inability to reveal himself, there is the ever-recurring difficulty of gaining the public ear. Young writers are buoyed up by the hope and the belief that they have only to throw that poem at the world's feet to get back in return the laurel-crown; that they have only to push that novel into print to be acknowledged at once as a new light in literature. You can never convince a young author that the editors of magazines and the publishers of books are a practical body of men, who are by no means fanatically anxious about placing
It is not the melody or inspiration of a poem, or the worth of a novel, they consider; but their mercantile value. And if this fact were more distinctly understood it would prevent a good deal of disappointment and heart-burning. For young writers will never understand that all their negotiations are conducted on trade principles, and that it is as unwise for an inexperienced author to negotiate for his books as it would be for the merest amateur to enter into competition with one who has had a lifetime experience of Christie's sales. Hence, the enormous boon of the Authors' Society, London, whose courteous and clever secretary is always ready to enter into correspondence with its members, and give strictly legal and professional advice on the many most difficult questions that concern the publication of books. And if you ever think you have a valuable book to place on the market, and if you want to escape the clutches of some unscrupulous publisher, who will take advantage of your inexperience and carelessness to get you into his power, and make large capital out of your brainwork, giving you back but the veriest minimum of royalties, I would advise you never to sign an agreement without first submitting it to the keen eye of the Secretary of the Authors' Society.
But supposing your book fairly launched, its perils are only beginning. You have to run the gauntlet of the critics. To a young author, again, this seems to be as terrible an ordeal as passing down the files of Sioux or Comanche Indians, each one of whom is thirsting for your scalp. When you are a little older, you will find that criticism is not much more serious than the bye-play of clowns in a circus, when they beat around the ring the victim with bladders slung at the end of long poles. A time comes in the life of every author when he regards critics as comical, rather than formidable, and goes his way unheeding. But there are sensitive souls that yield under the chastisement, and, perhaps after suffering much silent torture, abandon the profession of the pen for ever.
Again, although there is a good deal of good nature and fraternal feeling, and a sense of war on Parnassus.
I do not know anything more painful and humiliating than to see a beloved poet or a worshipped author, descend into the arena of vulgar controversy. It is a dethronement of our idols that is akin to loss of faith. Hence, the life of a poet should never be written. The world should be satisfied with the legacy of his immortal works. Hence is
I never resented anything more than that article in the
I quote this to show how unwise it is for aggrieved authors to lift the veil on their feelings, and compel the small world to ask, how such anger can find a place in celestial minds.
But it proves that the literary life is riot all sunshine. I spoke of the eternal and universal law of reproduction. But there is the counter instinct, alas! also eternal and universal, and only too well developed in the human heart — the instinct of attack and destruction; and this always finds its object in whatever is most fair and beautiful. Weeds have no parasites. These latter find their way to the under leaf of rose and lily.
I think that here, too, may be found a remote reason for the profound pessimism that seems to be a characteristic of all great geniuses. The little we know of
The still, sad music of humanity,
and
typifies the same.
I need not quote
But, besides the petty annoyances and grinding cares inseparable from the literary life, there was another cause for their pessimism. It was this: —
All great thinkers live and move on a high plane of thought. It is only there they can breathe freely. It is only in contact with spirits like themselves they can live harmoniously and
the sacred everlasting calm
of the immortal spirits of our race
the pale cast of thought
in which they were engendered. I know but one exception to this universal scepticism — the case of believing all things, hoping all things, loving all things.
But I explain the singular fact by the theory that
Perhaps you will be surprised, after this enumeration of the many trials and drawbacks in the literary life, when I draw the strange conclusion that I most earnestly recommend it to those whose tastes lead in that direction; but always with the condition that it is regarded not as a profession or means towards an independent livelihood. And I recommend it for a threefold reason: First, as a resource and pleasure in those hours of depression or
(1) There is certainly no greater or more lasting mental resource than a taste for letters or the literary life. Music palls upon many; social pleasures are not always available or desirable. But the art of composition, once acquired, is never lost, and never wearies; and you can pursue it without extraneous aid and in that solitude that is so dear to those who try to think deeply. I know no greater pleasure,
wrote and few more refining, than for a young man to open his portfolio, and walking up and down his room, strive to spoil that virgin page with words that may be immortal.
And if you are fortunate enough to get into print, so much the better.
It seems to me that Reading Circles or Guilds in our chief towns and cities might help materially, not only the cultivation of literary tastes, but the calling or vocation to a literary life.
a social scourge, a public calamity, and adds a new terror to life
; and he quotes the opinion of a learned friend, who said that if it be true that the Empress Octavia fainted away while
Courage, my friends, I see land at last!
But if it is a daring thing to suggest the formation of Reading Guilds in our midst I am about to do a desperate thing in suggesting, as an incentive to a literary life, the establishment of a purely literary journal. We are so deluged with journals and reforms, and methods of reform, that I am sure at the very suggestion you will cast up your eyes and say, Yet another!
But on the one hand, there cannot be a doubt of the steady decadence, and even extinction, of these literary tastes in our midst, which originated fifty or sixty years ago in the hedge schools, and which, helped by the tone of the public journals, constituted quite an Augustine age in our literature. On the other hand, it is quite useless to look to our schools or educational system for such a revival of tastes as would place us on a level with the cultured classes of other nations. But no one can deny that the literary talent requisite for working successfully a great literary journal is available in Ireland. One Dublin magazine, if it were
(2) I hold, in the second place, that a literary life is necessarily a life of refinement and culture. I cannot see how it can be otherwise. I cannot see how any man or woman, living habitually with the prophets and seers of the race, can descend willingly to the lower levels of sense or self-interest. And I again repeat that no man can attain conspicuous literary success, or become a light to his generation, unless he has sat an obedient pupil at the feet of the great masters in his art. I know you may quote against me certain poets and philosophers who preached or sang divinely and lived diabolically. But
The Everlasting Year,in the Third Book of
the man in the street.But this danger is remote, except, as I have said, in the pessimism of great authors. Most others will come down from Olympus with only Infinite Pity in their hearts for poor, sordid, struggling humanity.
(3) Lastly (and I am sure you are as well pleased with the word, as when you hear in Church, One word more, and I have done
), there is the Apostolate of Literature. It is a subject that might be developed not only into a Lecture, but into a Book; and I am acting unwisely in giving it but a paragraph at the end of a paper. But I shall address myself only to one aspect of it.
I feel that I am contravening the opinions of each and every section into which modern Ireland is divided when I say, that in the work of nation-building the chief requisite would be architects of large, liberal ideas, gathered from the world's chief thinkers, and assimilated so perfectly that they would be manifested in firmer judgments, wider speculations, more generous sympathies, and larger toleration than we find in our little
the masters of those who know,
in every age, of every country and clime. And whilst I am very proud of being an ardent propagandist of the Gaelic League, I cannot sympathise with those who think, I am sure honestly and sincerely, that we should only read Irish books, and write on Irish subjects; and who speak with some contempt of Anglo-Irish writers and cosmopolitan patriots. If such ideas had been accepted in other countries, I wonder where the literary glories, nay, the political triumphs of England, France, Germany, Spain, and Italy would be to-day? If
Nor is it reasonable that it should be otherwise. There is a certain fund of original thought stored up in the written archives, the unwritten traditions, and the daily habitudes of every race. And if thought is the parent of thought, and language its vehicle, I think that that nation would soon be starved which would limit itself to the creations of its own children. Even if it be said that home thoughts are the best thoughts, well, they will become more valuable by being appraised by comparison with the ideas of others. But certainly in our days, when we may be on the eve of tremendous changes, I would wish for systems of education, based on broader principles than we now possess; and as that seems almost beyond the horizon of our hopes, I would wish to see literary tastes more widely extended and more liberally developed, to the end that, with larger views and freer sympathies, we might be able to view the present condition of our country, as it were, in the perspective, the true perspective of solid judgment, and unbiassed and unprejudiced sympathies. And as we cannot, as a nation, go outside ourselves without courting self-destruction, the only thing that
I do not despair of seeing yet in Ireland — in its populous centres, which ought to become luminous points, radiating light all around; and its quiet, country places, where all the surroundings are favourable to peaceful thought and meditation — large circles of thinkers, devoted to literature, and science, and art, and insensibly leading up the masses of the people to their own regions of high thought, and refined and exalted sentiment. I feel sure that outside the storm-belt, the torrid zone of political life, there must be many of both sexes who desire to live more gentle lives in the temperate regions where passion has no place, where there is no intriguing, no statesmanship (as the euphemism has it), no contention, except the academic striving after literary success, or a calm and passionless debate about a point of art, or a subtlety of expression. Such a literary, shall I say ideal, world must not expect recognition. Nothing is recognised in Ireland except what is entangled in the meshes of politics. The last trump of doom would sound before we would think of putting up a monument to such a thinker as larger, other eyes
than ours. The great, generous American people do not ask if a dead poet were a Democrat or a Republican, whether he was enmeshed in the toils of Tammany or other political organisation. They only ask: Was he a Poet? and they recognise his worth accordingly. The great German nation acknowledge as the bright, particular star
of its firmament,
I cannot recall just now any public recognition of genius in Ireland — of genius as such, and apart from political services — except that most brilliant and honourable episode in the history of Trinity College, when, on the 15th August, 1835, in the presence of three hundred members of the British Association, and all the Fellows of Trinity, assembled in the dining-hall of the College, a young Professor and Fellow, of twenty-seven years, not,
as his Excellency said, as conferring a distinction, but as setting the royal and national mark on a distinction already acquired by genius and labour.
But this is not the point. I am contemplating a condition of things where literature will be pursued for its own sake, and for the effects it must necessarily have on those who are happy to be its votaries. I do not yet despair of seeing a shelf of books in every labourer's cottage in the land. I do not despair of seeing our artisans seeking their evening recreation and their Sunday pleasure in the company of great thinkers and sweet singers. I hope I may see the time when one could say Dante
or Browning,
without inducing the dread silence of an earthquake panic in the higher circles of the land; and when one might say Turner
or Botticelli
without incurring the suspicion of affectation or pedantry. The day may be remote; when it comes it will usher in a Golden Age, fraught with vast possibilities for the social, religious, and political welfare of Ireland. For our social advancement inasmuch as it may raise the tone of daily life and bring an atmosphere of refinement and gentleness where now there is too much The contemplative Atheist,
says is rare. A little philosophy inclineth man's mind to Atheism; but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds around to religion.
For our political welfare, — for a commonwealth founded by a people of large knowledge, trained understanding, quickened perceptions, and solid principles,
Freedom slowly broadening down, from precedent to precedent.
As yet we live by hope: but we must work on, humbly and hopefully straining after an ideal, doing our duty in the narrowest social and parochial surroundings, and trusting that an aggregate of effort will achieve success in more spacious times and more gentle surroundings than it is our lot to experience at present.