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CHAMBERS’S JOURNAL
OF
POPULAR
LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART.
CONTENTS
LITERARY ENDEAVOUR.
IN ALL SHADES.
SOME AMERICANISMS.
A GOLDEN ARGOSY.
LEGAL ANECDOTES.
THE MONTH: SCIENCE AND ARTS.
OCCASIONAL NOTES.
AN OLD ‘CHUBB.’
No. 109.—Vol. III.
Price 1½d.
SATURDAY, JANUARY 30, 1886.
LITERARY ENDEAVOUR.
A recent writer remarks that ‘the practice ofletters is miserably harassing to the mind. Tofind the right word is so doubtful a success, andlies so near to failure, that there is no satisfactionin a year of it.’ A cynical warning, indeed; butthere is, we think, no danger of a scarcity ofliterary effort in the immediate future, whateverthe appreciable results of it may be. There willalways be a host of aspirants for literary honours,and the reason of this may perhaps lie, to acertain extent, in that very uncertainty whichattends the pursuit of letters as an avocation;the brilliant rewards which have been earned andthe underlying risk of failure, present togetherthe very conditions of enterprise most powerfullyattractive to many minds. For it must beremembered that there is no fixedness in thecanon either of public opinion or of criticism inliterature; that which fails to win attentionto-day, may attract to-morrow; and success, especiallythat form of it which results from passingpopularity, is in many cases very much dependenton the proverbial fickleness of the reading public.It would be difficult, we think, on other groundsthan that of this attractiveness of the chancesand prizes of the literary occupation, to accountfor the active competition which is so observablein the profession. That the pure literary faculty,as a stimulus, does not form a distinguishingcharacteristic of all aspirants, is plain enough.No doubt, a great impetus has been given toliterary endeavour by the periodical press, which,by popularising ephemeral literature among themasses, and by its own requirements of supply,has thus increased its production. And thesame is true of the newspaper press also, withits opportunities for the contribution of correspondence,which, though frequently a humbleenough opening for talent, has often sufficed tooriginate and foster the habit of more ambitiouscomposition.
The canon of literary criticism is, we have said,not an unvarying one. But undoubtedly thereis, for all perfect, and still more for all enduringwork in the world of letters a certain measureand standard of excellenc