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ing, and totally deficient in those "brilliant flashes of silence" which Sydney Smith once jokingly recommended to Macaulay. In fact, as a Scotchman once said of Johnson, she was "a robust genius, born to grapple with whole libraries, and

a tremendous conversationist."

Madame de Staël.

A story is told of the Duke of Marlborough, great-grandfather of the present Duke, which always amused me. The Duke had been for some time a confirmed hypochondriac, and dreaded anything that could in any way ruffle the tranquil monotony of his existence. It is said that he remained for three years without pronouncing a single word, and was entering the fourth year of his silence, when he was told one morning that Madame la Baronne de Staël, the authoress of "Corinne," was on the point of arriving to pay him a visit. The Duke immediately recovered his speech, and roared out, "Take me away, take me away!" to the utter astonishment of the circle around him, who all declared that nothing but the terror of this literary visitation could have put an end to this long and obstinate monomania.

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FRANCIS WHITING HALSEY.

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The Enormous
Output.

It is a universal and much-expressed regret that the literary output has of late years become almost a food. On all sides one hears complaints of it. Men and women are perplexed to know where they shall begin their reading and where end it. The books published in Great Britain alone now number each year 6,000, and perhaps they have gone up to 7,000, of which only about 1,500 are new editions. These figures have not yet been reached in America, but they have been very nearly approached; so that in the two countries we have each year about 11,000 books, though many of these are necessarily counted twice, having been brought out in both continents.

Literature Short-lived.

Books as they come from the press are in fact fast becoming what many newspapers and magazines have been-publications whose term of life is ephemeral. They exist as the favourites of a month, or possibly a year; then, having had their brief summer-time of success, they silently go their destined way. Oblivion overwhelms them. Not ten per cent of any one year's books can hope to linger a year after their publication in the popular memory even as names.

Only the Best Books Live.

Meanwhile, though the publishers never before were so deluged with manuscripts, there is something to be thankful for in the fact that only a very small proportion of the writing activity going on ever finds representation in printed books. A few years ago Frederick Macmillan declared publicly in London that his house in one year had accepted only 22 manuscripts out of 315 submitted. Inclined as we may be to blame

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the publishers for our deluge, these facts show us how substantial is our debt to them. They have served us most effectually as a dam.

Authors themselves have caught this fever and habit of rapid production. Once fame has come to them, they strive more and more to meet the demand for their writings, a process certain to ruin their art; and yet few withstand the temptation. One author records, as if he were proud of the achievement, that he can regularly produce 1,000 words in a day. Another can write 1,500, while the most accomplished of all in that line can produce 4,000. Trollope told us he could average 10,000 words a week, and when pushed could more than double the output. Writing done at this rate of speed is not literature and cannot be. It is simply job work, the work of day labourers— and in no sense the work of genius or inspiration.

Rapidly Written
Work
Short-lived.

Confiding readers who may indulge a belief that some of the popular books of the day of this description are to remain fairly permanent additions to English literature, should recall to their minds the titles of some of the most popular favourites of half a century or more ago. Here are an even dozen such: "Ringan Gilhaize," by John Galt (1823); "The Pilgrims of Walsingham," by Agnes Strickland (1825); "Two Friends," by the Countess of Blessington (1825); "Now and Then," by Samuel Warren (1848); "Over Head and Ears," by Dutton Cook (1868); "Temper and Temperament," by Mrs. Ellis (1846); "Modern Society," by Catherine Sinclair (1837); "Wood Leighton," by Mary Howitt (1836); "Round the Sofa," by Mrs. Gaskell (1859); "The Lost Link," by Thomas Hood (1868); "Lady Herbert's Gentlewoman," by Eliza Meteyard (1862); "Called to Account," by Annie Thomas (1867).

Few readers now living know anything of these books. The younger generation probably never heard of one of them. At the same time there came from the publishers other books in small editions, of which the fame is greater now than it ever was—those of Ruskin, Tennyson, Emerson, Hawthorne, and

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Carlyle, which have become permanent additions to the glory of the English tongue.

Causes of the Literary Deluge.

The causes of our deluge, once we reflect on the intellectual history of the past twenty or thirty years, are plainly to be seen. They lie in the greater efficiency of the common schools, the increase in attendance at colleges, the enormous growth of libraries, free and otherwise, the spread of such systems of instruction as are provided at Chautauqua, the growth of periodical literature, from reading which the public passes by a natural process of intuition to reading books, the free travelling libraries, and along with these causes the very important one of the general decline in the cost of printing books and magazines. To get an education has become the mere matter of taking the time to get it. One lies within the reach of all who seek it. How keen and widespread has become the appetite for reading is seen in the familiar fact that popular magazines find their largest support in small and distant communities. Many purely literary periodicals have their subscribers scattered through small towns from Maine to Texas, from Florida to the State of Washington. Readers in such localities have become a mainstay of book publishers also.

Pecuniary
Rewards.

The sale from the Arnold collection in May, 1901, of a copy of the first edition, containing the first title page, of Milton's "Paradise Lost," for $830, may or may not be the highest price that will ever be paid for a copy of that scarce book; but it starts reminiscences of the strangely unequal rewards which authorship has given from the earliest to the latest times. The money paid to Milton for the copyright of that poem was exactly $50, in instalments of $25 each, his estate afterward receiving an additional $25.

Milton was an explorer into an unknown world. He went farther among the possibilities of the English tongue than any

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other man, save one, had gone before him. The world, however, did not know what he had done until long afterward. He, in the meantime, had sold his book for what he could get, and the world, when it saw what he had accomplished, no longer had a chance to reward him.

The Rewards

of Literature.

Strange, indeed, in other ways, have been the rewards which literature has bestowed. When we think of the princely sums writers have earned in our day, it is startling to remember Burns and his immortal poverty, or Milton selling "Paradise Lost" for a picayune. A negro poet in our day, Paul L. Dunbar, does better than Burns or Milton did. Scarcely a year had passed after his "Lyrics of Lowly Life" came out, when more than 5,000 copies had been sold. He was the most widely read poet of a year. In England one of the magazines, following a French custom, had "crowned" a volume of verse by Stephen Phillips, and the newspapers chronicled as a great success the sale of 500 copies, with another of 700 as on the press. But here was the coloured man, whom nobody had crowned, boasting 5,000 copies.

It is not poetry, nor is it other literature of a creative kind, that wins the largest pecuniary rewards. It is usually the man who performs some great feat, perhaps in exploration, and then writes a book. It was this fact that made General Grant a most successful writer, made Stanley another, and Nansen a third. The returns these authors gained raised them to independence.

The Enormous Profits in Modern

Of all writings, save those just named, it is fiction that yields the largest returns, because the sales are so enormous. The contrast between the returns which Gibbon received and those which poured into the lap of Scott would probably be as great, and perhaps even greater, were they writing in our times. With the increase Gibbon might now secure, there would be corresponding increase for Scott. Froude in his later life had an ampler reward than Gibbon; and ampler than Scott's have been

Fiction.