The Arkansaw traveler., 1885-11-14
THE REWARDS OF LITERATURE
TBoston Globe.l

udI, LeIt pl 50 900 OentnQ nlm as the re Esult of his literary labors. It is said that he was ths most successful money-maker among the authors of his time Proba- ply he was, for nothing sells like humor AFtemus Ward had greater run of success both as writer and a lecturer indeed he was the original American hu- morist after whose style Josh Billing" " admittedly patterned. Bat "Artemus Ward did not leave SIso 900 behind him. Horace Greedy and Richard H. Stoddard, who were the executors of his will found the estate finally to con- slst of little more than house in You- kers worth S6 900. The truth is that lit erary labor, like virtue, must to a large degree be its own reward. lf"Blllings' had not been a natural money.getter, with turn for thrift, he would have done no better than his mo flmous proto- type. There have never been large for. tunes in literary careers. Authorship is better paid today than it ever was, how ever, and the tendency is to steadily in- crease its emoluments. The annals of literature contain some curious evidence on this point.
 That nearly all the writers whose works are now standard classics made more glory than gold by their work is simply the cold truth of history. The highest price paid for poem in modern times was SI5 900. which was paid for Laila Rookh." Pope was lucky man. his translation ofthe "lliad" netting him S2s,- COO, 9 sum equal in his day to twice as much as in ours. That, however. was not a legitimate harvest. It was due to the fact that Swift would not permit Pope | to put the Had to press until he had rolled up subscriptions at court amount ing to over S GOO Gay was another fortunate author. He made SIS GOO by his " Beggar's Opera," and at one time was reputed to be worth $Ioo GOO all made by literary work. But he was a spendihrift, and died poor.
 Swift had no gift ot money-makiug, and literally wrote for the love of it. With one exception that of "Gulliver's Travels" for which he got SI zoo he never took cent for anything he wrote. Tom Moore, the sweetest lyric writer Of the age, and one of the most prolific, left nothing to his widow, for whose ben eht Lord Russel raised SIS 900 by the sale of Moore's memoir. But it is to be said of Swift that he was well paid indirectly, though not directly, for his lit- erary work. It made him all but bishop. Addison was similarly rewarded for services to the government of the day by patronage worth SIo,ooo a year. His praises of Marlborough, the victor of Blenhelm, made him privy councillor and secretary of state Robert Burns netted just SIoo from the publication of his first volume of poems. He was so poor that the second edition of his poems was long withheld from the press for lack of means to pay the necessary publish CTS expenses, and he was delighted lt- tie later to be made an officer of excise with salary of S25o year.
 Magsz ne ana newspaper writers have, as body, been more successful in a pe- cuniary sense than bookmakers. Thack- cray made great deal of money out of magazine work at S5 a page. Dick ems and Sala did the same thing. Macaulay gathered more shekels for his Edinburgh ReaiezV articles than from any other source, receiving for some of them as much as SI 800. Tradition says that Brougham on one occasion re- ceived S5 1000 in one sum as pay for wri. ting whole number of the great Whig quarterly. As editor of the Cornhill Nagasfne Thackeray's salary was SIo,ooo year and Charles Reade, the novelist, declined about ten years ago to take similar position for less than S5 900 year. This indicates the growing value of magazine work, for it is a historic fact that Moore asked S 900 year for editing the Edinburgh RevieaO, just after Jeffrey retired, and failed to get 1t. Jefftey's salary was SS 800 per annum. Tom Barnes, the famous editor of the London Times, re ceived S5 900 year up to the date of his retirement, in lS3o, and then the proprie- tor offered the position to the poet Southey, and later to Moore, with salary of SIS 900 year and share in the profits. Douglas Jerrold was paid $5 GOO ayear as the editor of Lloyd's lPteky. h his day it was a phenom- enal stipend, but today it is the usual salary of a London editor.
 The rewards of literary work, espe. cialy that done for the magazines and newspapers, have increased in like pro- portion, or even faster, on this sloe of the Atlantic. The number of editorships with S5 600, $7 900 and Slo 900 salaries attached IS year by year increasing. Our short-story writers, too, are in clover in these days. Edward Everett Hale, J. T. Trowbridge, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, Harriet Prescott Spotford, or any one of our popular short-story tell. CTS, easily command S2oo for story that fills not over three colu mns of newspa. per print. The newspaper, in this matter of compensation for literary work. dis tinctly threatens the supremacy of the magazine, and the time is probably not far off when the most profitable market for all writers, whether of prose or poe try, fact or fiction, who have anything worth saying, and are able to say it within manageable limits, will be the daily newspaper office. The newspapers, es- pecially the Sunday issues, are fast taking the place of the magazine as the purvey- ore Of inc hacf xvotk ci fhA kast y,1,od~ 1 eI