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The Art of Writing-Part4_ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON(1850-1894)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

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lives; and like the missionary, the patriot, or the

philosopher, we should all choose that poor and brave career



in which we can do the most and best for mankind. Now

Nature, faithfully followed, proves herself a careful mother.



A lad, for some liking to the jingle of words, betakes

himself to letters for his life; by-and-by, when he learns



more gravity, he finds that he has chosen better than he

knew; that if he earns little, he is earning it amply; that



if he receives a small wage, he is in a position to do

considerable services; that it is in his power, in some small



measure, to protect the oppressed and to defend the truth.

So kindly is the world arranged, such great profit may arise



from a small degree of human reliance on oneself, and such,

in particular, is the happy star of this trade of writing,



that it should combine pleasure and profit to both parties,

and be at once agreeable, like fiddling, and useful, like



good preaching.

This is to speak of literature at its highest; and with the



four great elders who are still spared to our respect and

admiration, with Carlyle, Ruskin, Browning, and Tennyson



before us, it would be cowardly to consider it at first in

any lesseraspect. But while we cannot follow these



athletes, while we may none of us, perhaps, be very vigorous,

very original, or very wise, I still contend that, in the



humblest sort of literary work, we have it in our power

either to do great harm or great good. We may seek merely to



please; we may seek, having no higher gift, merely to gratify

the idle nine days' curiosity of our contemporaries; or we



may essay, however feebly, to instruct. In each of these we

shall have to deal with that remarkable art of words which,



because it is the dialect of life, comes home so easily and

powerfully to the minds of men; and since that is so, we



contribute, in each of these branches, to build up the sum of

sentiments and appreciations which goes by the name of Public



Opinion or Public Feeling. The total of a nation's reading,

in these days of daily papers, greatly modifies the total of



the nation's speech; and the speech and reading, taken

together, form the efficienteducationalmedium of youth. A



good man or woman may keep a youth some little while in

clearer air; but the contemporaryatmosphere is all-powerful



in the end on the average of mediocre characters. The

copious Corinthian baseness of the American reporter or the



Parisian CHRONIQUEAR, both so lightly readable, must exercise

an incalculable influence for ill; they touch upon all



subjects, and on all with the same ungenerous hand; they

begin the consideration of all, in young and unprepared



minds, in an unworthy spirit; on all, they supply some

pungency for dull people to quote. The mere body of this



ugly matter overwhelms the rare utterances of good men; the

sneering, the selfish, and the cowardly are scattered in



broad sheets on every table, while the antidote, in small

volumes, lies unread upon the shelf. I have spoken of the



American and the French, not because they are so much baser,

but so much more readable, than the English; their evil is



done more effectively, in America for the masses, in French

for the few that care to read; but with us as with them, the



duties of literature are daily neglected, truth daily

perverted and suppressed, and grave subjects daily degraded



in the treatment. The journalist is not reckoned an

important officer; yet judge of the good he might do, the



harm he does; judge of it by one instance only: that when we




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