Cheyenne transporter. [volume] (Darlington, Indian Terr.) 1879-1886, 1881-09-24

Past and Present Examples, and the
Part journalism Has Played.


London Daily News.
The stories of Otway, Chatterton,
and Savage prove that the misery of
even distinguished men of letters was
some thing more than myth, suggest
ed by Pope's hatred of Grub street.
The vast increase in the number of
readers has raised literature from the
gutter, and even enabled her to share
the crumbs that fall from civic tables.
Chatterton and Otway, and even Saw
age, could scarcely manage to starve
in our time. To be sure, if they had
insisted on writing poetry, and moth
ing but poetry, they might have made
acquaintance with hunger, bankrupt
cy, and the work-house. But the
times would have taught them wisdom.
There is only one recorded instance of
a poet who refused to write even an
ordinary letter in prose, and he was a
Frenchman of 1880. In Chatterton's
days the most degraded failures in lit
erature, the poets whose lines would
neither scan nor rhyme, turned "gazet-
teers." Pope describes them as num-
berless and nameless as blind puppies
drowned before they can see. Doubt
stopped to this rather than have starved
or begged.
But if the modern appetite for pc
riOdical literature, boundless and in
satiate as it is, has rescued literature
from hunger, it is not certain that lit
erature has been thereby elevated as an
art. 1t, as well as journalism, has be-
come profession, and profession Of
which the members are apt to be rath-
er hurried in their work. Even in the
middle Of the last century literature
was turning in this direction. John
sons greatest pieces were done as reg
ular jobs tor the booksellers. Gold
smith was generally paid in advance
for his copy" and was constantly in
arrears. A certain haste and perfume
tOriness, a certain laxity of style, are
apt to be the defects of literature
which is turned out as a piece of busi-
ness to meet Il given demand. Litera-
ture which has much of this defect can
hardly become classical and live.
Fortunately there will always be men
of letters SO gifted by nature with
style, and SO truly artists, that even
their hack work will be well done. OF
these men were Johnson and Gold
smith in England, Poe in America, and
Gautier in France, though the nature
of his vocatiOns and the hurry in which
he piled his trade often caused Gautier
to want ideal worthy Of his beautiful
workmanship. All men of letters in
an age when letters are profession
are apt, as Thackery said, to exhaust
the soil Of their minds, to till and re-
till field into which they could afford
to put no new material of reading and
of thinking. Excellent literary work
can scarcely be obtained for any length
Of time from men who have taken ear.
ly and by choice to their profession
Their time is so much occupied 10y
writing, it is SO necessary for them tC
be always producing. that they have
no chance of acquiring and digestinp
new stories Of knowledge. Even in
fiction, when the weaving of 70
nance becomes a handicraft, the same
difficulty makes itself felt. Men car
only write fiction out of their expert
ence; they must study character, ant
make acquaintances with many Socia
ranks, with many new places, and new
faces, if they are to write with fresh
ness and vigor.