The instinct which leads the
world to worship success is not dangerous. The book which succeeds
accomplishes its aim. The book which fails may have many excellencies,
but they must have been misdirected. Let us, however, understand what
is meant by failure. From want of a clear recognition of this meaning,
many a serious writer has been made bitter by the reflection that
shallow, feeble works have found large audiences, whereas his own work
has not paid the printing expenses. He forgets that the readers who
found instruction and amusement in the shallow books could have found
none in his book, because he had not the art of making his ideas
intelligible and attractive to them, or had not duly considered what
food was assimilable by their minds. It is idle to write in
hieroglyphics for the mass when only priests can read the sacred
symbols.
No one, it is hoped, will suppose that by what is here said I
countenance the notion which is held by some authors--a notion implying
either arrogant self-sufficiency or mercenary servility--that to
succeed, a man should write down to the public.
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