from queen to peasant, and half of what is certain theories. To the vast mass of the public these theories were incredible, unpalatable, impious. With immense patience, without emphasis of any kind, he proceeded to substantiate his views, to enlarge his exposition; and gradually the cold body of democratic opposition melted around that fervent atom of heat, and, in response to its unbroken radiation, became warm itself. All that can be said is that the new democratic condition is a better conductor than the old oligarchical one was. Darwin produces his effect. more steadily and rapidly than Galileo or Spinoza, but not more surely, with exactly as little aid from without. With this exception, however, the principal poetical writers of our time seem to be unaffected by the pressure of the masses around them. They select their themes, remain true to the principles of composition which they prefer, concern themselves with the execution of their verses, and regard the opinion of the millions as little or even less than their great forerunners did that of emperor or prince-bishop. Being born with quick intelligences into an age burdened by social difficulties, these latter occasionally interest them As far, then, as the summits of literature very acutely, and they write about them, are concerned the great masters of not, I think, pressed into that service by style, the great discoverers, the great inthe democratic spirit, but yielding to the tellectual illuminators - it may be said attraction of what is moving and pictur- that the influence of democracy upon esque. A wit has lately said of the most them is almost nil. It affords them a popular, the most democratic of living wider hearing, and therefore a prompter French poets, M. François Coppée, that recognition. It gives them more readers, his blazon is "des rimes riches sur la and therefore a more direct arrival at that blouse prolétaire." But the central fact degree of material comfort necessary for to a critic about M. Coppée's verse is, not the proper conduct of their investigations, the accident that he writes about poor or the full polish of their periods. It may people, but the essential point that his spoil them with its flatteries, or diminish rhymes are richer and his verse more their merit by seducing them to over-profaultless than those of any of his contem- duction; but this is a question between poraries. We may depend upon it that themselves and their own souls. A syndemocracy has had no effect on his pros-dicate of newspapers, or the editor of a ody, and the rest is a mere matter of magazine may tempt a writer of to-day, as selection. The fact seems to be that the more closely we examine the highest examples of the noblest class of literature the more we become persuaded that democracy has scarcely had any effect upon them at all. It has not interfered with the poets, least of all has it dictated to them. It has listened to them with respect; it has even contemplated their eccentricities with admiration; it has tried, with its millions of untrained feet, to walk in step with them. And when we turn from poetry to the best science, the best history, the best fiction, we find the same phenomenon. Democracy has been stirred to its depths by the writings of Darwin; but who can trace in those writings the smallest concession to the judgment or desire of the masses? Darwin became convinced of Villon was tempted with the wine-shop, or Coleridge with laudanum; but that is not the fault of the democracy. Nor, if a writer of real power is neglected, are people more or less to blame in 1891 than they were for letting Otway starve two hundred years ago. Some people, beloved of the gods, cannot be explained to mankind by king or caucus. So far, therefore, as our present experience goes, we may relinquish the common fear that the summit of literature will be submerged by democracy. When the new spirit first began to be studied, many whose judgment on other points was sound enough were confident that the instinctive programme of the democratic spirit was to prevent intellectual capacity of every kind from developing, for fear of the ascendency which it would exercise. This is communism, and means democracy pushed to an impossible extremity, to a point from which it must rebound. No doubt, there is always a chance that a disturbance of the masses may for a moment wash over and destroy some phase of real intellectual distinction, just as it may sweep away, also for a moment, other personal conditions. But it looks as though the individuality would always reassert itself. The crowd that smashed the porcelain in the White House to celebrate the election of President Andrew Jackson had to buy more to take its place. The White House did not continue, even under Jackson, to subsist without porcelain. In the same way, edicts may be passed by communal councils forbidding citizens to worship the idols which the booksellers set up, and even that consummation may be reached, to which a prophet of our own day looks forward, when we shall all be forced by the police to walk hand in hand with "the craziest sot in the village," as our friend and equal; none the less will human nature, at the earliest opportunity, throw off the bondage, and openly prefer Darwin and Tennyson to that engaging rustic. Indeed, all the signs of the times go to suggest that the completer the democracy becomes, the vaster the gap will be in popular honor between the great men of letters and "the craziest sot in the village." It is quite possible that the tyranny of extreme intellectual popularity may prove as tiresome as other and older tyrannies were. But that's another story, as the new catchword tells us. Literature, however, as a profession or a calling, is not confined to the writings of the five or six men who, in each generation, represent what is most brilliant and most independent. From the leaders, in their indisputable greatness, the intellectual hierarchy descends to the lowest and broadest class of workers who in any measure hang on to the skirts of literature, and eke out a living by writing. It is in the middle ranks of this vast pyramid that we should look to see most distinctly the signs of the influence of democracy. We shall not find them in the broad and featureless residuum any more than in the strongly individualized summits. But we ought to discover them in the writers who have talent enough to keep them aloft, yet not enough to make them indifferent to outer support. Here, where all is lost or gained by a successful appeal to the crowd as it hastens by, we might expect to see very distinctly the effects of democracy, and here, perhaps, if we look closely, we may see them. 66 It appears to me that even here it is not so easy as one would imagine that it would be to pin distinct charges to the sleeve of the much-abused democracy. Let us take the bad points first. The enlargement of the possible circle of an author's readers may awaken in the breast of a man who has gained a little success, the desire to arrive at a greater one in another field, for which he is really not so well equipped. An author may have a positive talent for church history, and turning from it, through cupidity, to fiction, may, by addressing a vastly extended public, make a little more money by his bad stories than be was able to make by his good hagiology, and so act to the detriment of literature. Again, an author who has made a hit with a certain theme, or a certain treatment of that theme, may be held nailed down to it by the public long after he has exhausted it and it has exhausted him. Again, the complaisance of the public, and the loyal eagerness with which it cries Give, give," to a writer that has pleased it, may induce that writer to go on talking long after he has anything to say, and so conduce to the watering of the milk of wit. Or-and this is more subtle and by no means so easy to observe the pressure of commonplace opinion, constantly checking a writer when he shelves away towards either edge of the trodden path of mediocrity, may keep him from ever adding to the splendid originalities of literature. This shows itself in the disease which we may call Mudieitis, the inflammation produced by the fear that what you are inspired to say, and know you ought to say, will be unpalatable to the circulating libraries, that "the wife of a country incumbent," that terror before which Messrs. Smith fall prone upon their faces, may write up to headquarters and expostulate. In all these cases, without doubt, we have instances of the direct influence of democracy upon literature, and that of a deleterious kind. Not one of them, how. ever, can produce a bad effect upon any but persons of weak or faulty character, and these would probably err in some other direction, even at the court of a grand duke. On the other hand, the benefits of dem. ocratic surroundings are felt in these middle walks of literature. The appeal to a very wide audience has the effect of giv ing a writer whose work is sound but not of universal interest, an opportunity of collecting, piecemeal, individual readers tres. to draw a rough line, not too high, above enough to support him. The average But when we pass from the quality of the best literature to the quantity of it, then it is impossible to preserve so indifferent or so optimistic an attitude. The democratic habit does not, if I am correct, make much difference in the way in which good authors write, but it very much affects the amount of circulation which their writings obtain. The literature of which I have hitherto spoken is that of which analysis can take cognizance, the writing which possesses a measure, at least, of distinction, of accomplishment, that which, in every class, belongs to the tradition of good work. It is very easy These amateurs and specialists, these writers of books that are not books, and essays that are not essays, are peculiarly the product of a democratic age. A love for the distinguished parts of literature, and even a conception that such parts exist, is not common among men, and it is not obvious that democracy has led to its encouragement. Hitherto the tradition of style has commonly been respected; no very open voice having been as yet raised against it. But with the vast ma mystery, and one which they secretly regard with suspicion. The enlargement of the circle of readers merely means an increase of persons who, without an ear, are admitted to the concert of literature. At present they listen to the traditional sonatas and mazurkas with bored respect, but they are really longing for music-hall ditties on the concertina. To this everincreasing congregation of the unmusical comes the technical amateur, with his dry facts and exact knowledge; the flippant amateur, with his comic" bits " and laughable miscellanies; the didactic and religious amateur, anxious to mend our manners and save our souls. These people, whose power must not be slighted, and whose value, perhaps, can only relatively be denied, have something definite, some. thing serviceable to give in the form of a paper or a magazine or a book. What wonder that they should form dangerous rivals to the writer who is assiduous about the way in which a thing is said, and care ful to produce a solid and harmonious | back on literary and artistic avocations, effect by characteristic language? should strengthen the nerves of those It was mainly during the close of the pessimists who, at the slightest approach seventeenth and the beginning of the to a similar condition in modern England, eighteenth century that this body of tech- declare that our intellectual prestige is nical, professional, and non-literary writ- sunken, never to revive. There is a great ing began to develop. We owe it, without elasticity in the tastes of the average man, doubt, to the spread of exact knowledge and when they have been pushed violently and the emancipation of speculative in one direction they do not remain fixed thought. It was from the law first, then there, but swing with equal force to the from divinity, then from science, and last opposite side. The aesthetic part of manfrom philosophy that the studied graces kind may be obscured, it cannot be oblitwere excluded a sacrifice on the altar erated. of positive expression. If a writer on precise themes were to adopt to-day the balanced elegance of Evelyn or Shaftesbury's stately and harmonious periods, he would either be read for his style and his sentiment or not at all. People would go for their information elsewhere. No doubt, in a certain sense, this change is due to the democracy; it is due to the quickening and rarifying of public life, to the creation of rapid needs, to a breaking down of barriers. But so long as the books and papers which deal with professional matters do not utterly absorb the field, so long as they leave time and space for pure literature, there is no reason why they should positively injure the latter, though they must form a constant danger to it. At times of public ferment, when great constitutional or social problems occupy universal attention, there can be no doubt that the danger ripens into real injury. When newspapers are full of current events in political and social life, the graver kind of books are slackly bought, and "the higher criticism" disappears from the reviews. We can imagine a state of things in which such a crowding out should become chronic, when the nervous system of the public should crave such incessant shocks of actuality, that no time should be left for thought or sentiment. We might arrive at the condition in which Wordsworth pictured the France of ninety years ago: Perpetual emptiness! unceasing change! No single volume paramount, no code, No master spirit, no determined road; But equally a want of books and men ! When we feel inclined to forebode such a shocking lapse into barbarism, it may help us if we reflect how soon France, in spite of, or by the aid of, democracy, threw off the burden of emptiness. The intellectual destitution of that country at the beginning of the century and the passionate avidity with which, on the return of political tranquillity, France threw herself The present moment appears to me to be a particularly unhappy one for indulging in gloomy diatribes against the democracy. Books, although they constitute the most durable part of literature, are not, in this day, by any means its sole channel. Periodical literature has certainly been becoming more and more democratic; and if the editors of our newspapers gauge in any degree the taste of their readers, that taste must be becoming more and more inclined to the formal and distinctive parts of writing. A few years ago, the London newspapers were singularly indifferent to the claims of books and of the men who wrote them. An occasional stately column of the Times represented almost all the notice which a daily paper would take of a volume. The provincial press was still worse provided; it afforded no light at all for such of its clients as were groping their way in the darkness of the book market. All this is now changed. One or two of the evening newspapers of London deserve great commendation for having dared to treat literary subjects, in distinction from mere reviews of books, as of immediate public interest. Their example has at length quickened some of the morning papers, and has spread into the provinces to such a signal degree that several of the great newspapers of the north of England are now served with literary matter of a quality and a fulness not to be matched in a single London daily twenty years ago. When an eminent man of letters dies, the comments which the London and country press make upon his career and the nature of his work are often quite astonishing in their fulness; space being dedicated to these notices such as, but a few years ago, would have been grudged to a politician or to a prize-fighter. The newspapers are the most democratic of all vehicles of thought, and the prominence of literary discussion in their columns does not look as though the democracy was anxious to be thought indifferent or hostile to literature. In all this bustle and reverberation, 66 however, it may be said that there is not | market, was heard to say with scorn, much place for those who desire, like Jean"Call him an author?" Why, yes! Chapelain, to live in innocence, with her neighbor replied, "don't you know he Apollo and with their books. There can has written so and so, and so and so?" be no question, that the tendency of mod-"Well," said the other, “I should like to ern life is not favorable to sequestered lit- know what his sales are before I allowed erary scholarship. At the same time, it is he was an author." a singular fact that, even in the present day, when a Thomas Love Peacock or an Edward Fitzgerald hides himself in a careful seclusion, like some rare aquatic bird in a backwater, his work slowly becomes manifest, and receives due recognition and honor. Such authors do not enjoy great sales, even when they become famous, but, in spite of their opposition to the temper of their time, in spite of all obstacles imposed by their own peculiarities of temperament, they receive, in the long run, a fair measure of success. They have their hour, sooner or later. More than that no author of their type could have under any form of political government, or at any period of history. They should not, and, in fairness it must be said they rarely do, complain. They know that "Dieu paie," as Alphonse Karr said, "mais il ne paie pas tous les samedis." It would be highly inopportune to call for a return of the bona fide sales of those of our leading authors who are not novelists. It is to be hoped that no such indul. gence to the idlest curiosity will ever be conceded. But if such a thing were done, it would probably reveal some startling statistics. It would be found that many of those whose names are only next to the highest in public esteem do not receive more than the barest pittance from their writings, even from those which are most commonly in the mouths of their contemporaries. To mention only two writers, but these of singular eminence and prominence, it was not until the later years of their lives that either Robert Browning or Matthew Arnold began to be sure of even a very moderate pecuniary return on their books. The curious point was that both of them achieved fame of a wide and bril. It is the writers who want to be paid liant nature long before their books began every Saturday upon whom democracy to "move," as publishers call it. It is not produces the worst effect. It is not the easy to think of an example of this curineglect of the public, it is the facility with ous fact more surprising than this, that which the money can be wheedled out of "Friendship's Garland" during many the pockets of the public on trifling occa- years did not pass out of one moderate sions that constitutes a danger to litera- edition. This book, published when Arture. There is an enormous quantity of nold was filling the mouths of men with almost unmixed shoddy now produced and his paradoxical utterances, lighted up all sold, and the peril is that authors who are through with such wit and charm of style capable of doing better things will be as can hardly, of its kind, be paralleled in seduced into adding to this wretched recent prose; a masterpiece, not dealing product for the sake of the money. We with remote or abstruse questions, but are highly solicitous nowadays, and it is with burning matters of the day this enmost proper that we should be, about ade-tertaining and admirably modern volume quate payment for the literary worker. enjoyed a sale which would mean deploraBut as long as that payment is in no sort ble failure in the case of a female novelist of degree proportioned to the merit of the of a perfectly subterranean order. article he produces, the question of its case could be paralleled, no doubt, by a scale of payment must remain one rather dozen others, equally striking. I have just for his solicitor than for the critics. The taken up a volume of humor, the producimportance of our own Society of Authors, tion of a funny man of the moment, for instance, lies, it appears to me, in its and I see on its title-page the statement constituting a sort of firm of solicitors that it is in its one hundred and nineteenth acting solely for literary clients. But the edition. Of this book one hundred and moment we go further than this, we get nineteen thousand copies have been into difficulties. The money standard bought during a space of time equal to tends to become the standard of merit. that in which Matthew Arnold sold probAt a recent public meeting, while one of ably about one hundred and nineteen the most distinguished of living technical copies of "Friendship's Garland." In the writers was speaking for the literary pro- face of these facts it is not possible to say fession, one of those purveyors of tenth- that, though it may buy well, the democrate fiction, who supply stories, as they racy buys wisely. might supply vegetables, to a regular This It is this which makes me fear that, as |