who may never make themselves a public, but who do well a kind of
acceptable work. These are the sort who do not get reprinted

from the periodicals; but the better recognized authors do get
reprinted, and then their serial work in its completed form

appeals to the readers who say they do not read serials. The
multitude of these is not great, and if an author rested his

hopes upon their favor he would be a much more embittered man
than he now generally is. But he understands perfectly well that

his reward is in the serial and not in the book; the return from
that he may count as so much money found in the road--a few

hundreds, a very few thousands, at the most.
V.

I doubt, indeed, whether the earnings of literary men are
absolutely as great as they were earlier in the century, in any

of the English-speaking countries; relatively they are nothing
like as great. Scott had forty thousand dollars for "Woodstock,"

which was not a very large novel, and was by no means one of his
best; and forty thousand dollars had at least the purchasing

powers of sixty thousand then. Moore had three thousand guineas
for "Lalla Rookh," but what publisher would be rash enough to pay

twenty-five thousand dollars for the masterpiece of a minor poet
now? The book, except in very rare instances, makes nothing like

the return to the author that the magazine makes, and there are
but two or three authors who find their account in that form of

publication. Those who do, those who sell the most widely in
book form, are often not at all desired by editors; with

difficulty they get a serial accepted by any principal magazine.
On the other hand, there are authors whose books, compared with

those of the popular favorites, do not sell, and yet they are
eagerly sought for by editors; they are paid the highest prices,

and nothing that they offer is refused. These are literary
artists; and it ought to be plain from what I am saying that in

belles-lettres, at least, most of the best literature now first
sees the light in the magazines, and most of the second best

appears first in book form. The old-fashioned people who flatter
themselves upon their distinction in not reading magazine

fiction, or magazine poetry, make a great mistake, and simply
class themselves with the public whose taste is so crude that

they cannot enjoy the best. Of course this is true mainly, if
not merely, of belles-lettres; history, science, politics,

metaphysics, in spite of the many excellent articles and papers
in these sorts upon what used to be called various emergent

occasions, are still to be found at their best in books. The
most monumental example of literature, at once light and good,

which has first reached the public in book form is in the
different publications of Mark Twain; but Mr. Clemens has of late

turned to the magazines too, and now takes their mint mark before
he passes into general circulation. All this may change again,

but at present the magazines--we have no longer any reviews--form
the most direct approach to that part of our reading public which

likes the highest things in literary art. Their readers, if we
may judge from the quality of the literature they get, are more

refined than the book readers in our community; and their taste
has no doubt been cultivated by that of the disciplined and

experienced editors. So far as I have known these they are men
of aesthetic conscience, and of generoussympathy. They have

their preferences in the different kinds, and they have their
theory of what kind will be most acceptable to their readers; but

they exercise their selective function with the wish to give them
the best things they can. I do not know one of them--and it has

been my good fortune to know them nearly all--who would print a
wholly inferior thing for the sake of an inferior class of

readers, though they may sometimes decline a good thing because
for one reason or another they believe it would not be liked.

Still, even this does not often happen; they would rather chance
the good thing they doubted of than underrate their readers'

judgment.
New writers often suppose themselves rejected because they are

unknown; but the unknown man of force and quality is of all
others the man whom the editor welcomes to his page. He knows

that there is always a danger that the reigning favorite may fail
to please; that at any rate, in the order of things, he is

passing away, and that if the magazine is not to pass away with
the men who have made it, there must be a constant infusion of

fresh life. Few editors are such fools and knaves as to let
their personal feeling disable their judgment; and the young

writer who gets his manuscript back may be sure that it is not
because the editor dislikes him, for some reason or no reason.

Above all, he can trust me that his contribution has not been
passed unread, or has failed of the examination it merits.

Editors are not men of infallible judgment, but they do use their
judgment, and it is usually good.

The young author who wins recognition in a first-class magazine
has achieved a double success, first, with the editor, and then

with the best reading public. Many factitious and fallacious
literary reputations have been made through books, but very few

have been made through the magazines, which are not only the best
means of living, but of outliving, with the author; they are both

bread and fame to him. If I insist a little upon the high office
which this modern form of publication fulfils in the literary

world, it is because I am impatient of the antiquated and
ignorant prejudice which classes the magazines as ephemeral.

They are ephemeral in form, but in substance they are not
ephemeral, and what is best in them awaits its resurrection in

the book, which, as the first form, is so often a lasting death.
An interesting proof of the value of the magazine to literature

is the fact that a good novel will have wider acceptance as a
book from having been a magazine serial.

I am not sure that the decay of the book is not owing somewhat to
the decay of reviewing. This does not now seem to me so

thorough, or even so general as it was some years ago, and I
think the book oftener comes to the buyer without the warrant of

a critical" target="_blank" title="a.批评的；关键性的">criticalestimate than it once did. That is never the case
with material printed in a magazine of high class. A

well-trained critic, who is bound by the strongest ties of honor
and interest not to betray either his employer or his public, has

judged it, and his practical approval is a warrant of quality.
VI.

Under the regime of the great literaryperiodicals the prosperity
of literary men would be much greater than it actually is, if the

magazines were altogetherliterary. But they are not, and this
is one reason why literature is still the hungriest of the

professions. Two-thirds of the magazines are made up of material
which, however excellent, is without literary quality. Very

probably this is because even the highest class of readers, who
are the magazine readers, have small love of pure literature,

which seems to have been growing less and less in all classes. I
say seems, because there are really no means of ascertaining the

fact, and it may be that the editors are mistaken in making their
periodicals two-thirds popular science, politics, economics, and

the timely topics which I will call contemporanies; I have
sometimes thought they were. But however that may be, their

efforts in this direction have narrowed the field of literary
industry, and darkened the hope of literaryprosperity kindled by

the unexampled prosperity of their periodicals. They pay very
well indeed for literature; they pay from five or six dollars a

thousand words for the work of the unknown writer, to a hundred
and fifty dollars a thousand words for that of the most famous,

or the most popular, if there is a difference between fame and