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entertainment, and he has achieved an amiable popularity which he
has adequately deserved. But the truth is, he does not, or did not
when he first embraced it, regard his profession from this purely
mercenary side. He went into it, I shall venture to say, if not
with any noble design, at least in the ardour of a first love; and
he enjoyed its practice long before he paused to calculate the
wage. The other day an author was complimented on a piece of work,
good in itself and exceptionally good for him, and replied, in
terms unworthy of a commercial traveller that as the book was not
briskly selling he did not give a copper farthing for its merit.
It must not be supposed that the person to whom this answer was
addressed received it as a profession of faith; he knew, on the
other hand, that it was only a whiff of irritation; just as we
know, when a respectable writer talks of literature as a way of
life, like shoemaking, but not so useful, that he is only debating
one aspect of a question, and is still clearly conscious of a dozen
others more important in themselves and more central to the matter
in hand. But while those who treat literature in this penny-wise
and virtue-foolish spirit are themselves truly in possession of a
better light, it does not follow that the treatment is decent or
improving, whether for themselves or others. To treat all subjects
in the highest, the most honourable, and the pluckiest spirit,
consistent with the fact, is the first duty of a writer. If he be
well paid, as I am glad to hear he is, this duty becomes the more
urgent, the neglect of it the more disgraceful. And perhaps there
is no subject on which a man should speak so gravely as that
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