66 The statement, so often repeated, and by people who ought to know better than to say such a misleading thing as that naked statement - I mean the dictum that capacity need never fear of failing to find prompt acceptance, inasmuch as editors are always on the lookout for fresh talent - is one that must be received with much qualification and reserve. It may be taken as a general rule that very special talent, amounting to genius, stands at first a bad chance, especially with periodicals. What chance would anything as new as Richter's "Hesperus" or Mr. Carlyle's "Sartor Resartus" have with our ordinary magazine? The chances are a million to one that the editor, though able and good-natured, would reject it at once, as not being "suited" to his "pages." A reason which would perhaps be a sound one; yet nobody can tell till the trial is made what kind of public an eccentric intellectual product may find. We know what a hard fight a man like Mr. Browning has to wage before he wins his way to such a position that he is sure of being read; and it is precisely the same with eccentric capacity of a lower order. That also is under difficulties. Two or three kinds of capacity stand a good chance at once. First, brilliancy of a slightly bourgeois or philistine "order. Ingoldsby is a case in point, and, irreverent though it seems, so is Dickens.* Secondly, talent of the usual journalistic or magazine kind, combined with adequate culture and knowledge of the world. Third, effective power, not easily fatigued and quick to produce, of an order which happens to suit the market at the time. At this moment, for example, the talent of the journalist and the talent of the novelist are in great request. It cannot be said that the supply of either exceeds the demand. ject in literature? If it is money, imme- | as Mr. Tennyson or Mr. Browning will be diate fame, or indeed fame at all, then you known. inay be enabled, after a certain number of attempts, to say if you have succeeded, or, in any case, if success is probable. The same applies if your object is anything else that is immediately tangible, like a party movement or a social change for example. But the case becomes more difficult when we pass upwards from the ranks of the Bread-Artist," as the Germans call him. Suppose a man has set his heart upon the production of poetry that will live, or the communication of a certain impulse to the thoughts or feelings of men. Here, we may affirm, to begin with, that, if he has once found an audience of much variety, genuine qualification is certain of some recognition. The variety in the audience is, however, essential if this is to hold true. Reason good: what is one man's meat is another man's poison; and numbers of persons, though sensitive to merit of one kind, are insensitive to merit of another. But the effect a man produces as poet, thinker, or what not during his lifetime, is no gauge whatever of the value of his communications to the world; that he is at once recognized by competent people proves that there is something in him; but what may happen in the way of subsequent recognition is all dark. Spinoza, while living, was known for an able man, but his public and his influence have been immensely greater since his death, and the amount of his influence upon modern thought is utterly inscrutable. John Sterling has been much more influential since his death than he ever was during his life, so far as we can tell. But these are matters in which we never can "tell" much. So that no man who has found his capacity recognized need despair at what appears to him the limited character of the impression he has made. A clergyman named Gay lives in philosophy on the strength of a mere pamphlet, in which (what is called) the law of association is (said to be) first assigned its proper place. Waller, Richard Lovelace, Gray, Andrew Marvell, and others, are remembered chiefly by a few happy lines apiece. "Give me but what this ribbon bound, Take all the rest the sun goes round." It is this exquisite couplet which may be said to have kept Waller alive. It is an awkward thing to refer to living poets; but I believe that very small sweet fragments will keep Mr. William Allingham and some others in memory quite as long 66 But here is perhaps the place to say that no capacity of any kind can hope to succeed without preparatory study and self-culture directed to the precise end in view. Of this, however, we will say more in subsequent pages. One of the reasons which tell against the mere outside adventurers is this that every editor is surrounded by known and tried contributors, who now and then wish to recommend or bring forward This truth being spoken-for the truth it isonly dull people will disbelieve me when I add that it is impossible that any one should have a more intense feeling for the genius of Dickens than I have.. others. Friendly feeling weighs with edi- to get a good speaking-trumpet. I am tors, like other people; and so it ought. thinking now of the "Letters of an EngYou, the outsider and stranger, may send lishman," which, as far as I know, were at a fairly good paper to a given periodical; once admitted to the Times solely on the but unless it is very decidedly better than strength of their merit and their applicaany which the literary adherents of the bility. But it is very rarely that so many periodical, among whom are sure to be favourable conditions concur as happened personal friends of its managers, why to unite in that particular case. In ninetyshould the editor give you the preference? nine instances out of a hundred the value He may be ever so ready to give you a of an introduction in getting a writer a chance; but, alas, it is morally certain good speaking-trumpet is immense. that he has arrears, perhaps six months long or more, of good articles from valued contributors, some of whom are pressing him, more or less gently, to give them a preference. A celebrated name is a kind of introduction which will illustrate the subject very well. Mr. Matthew Arnold, for example, inherits a name which is historical, and which has all the effect of most powerful introducBesides this, there is the policy of the tions. Apart from his genuine capacities periodical to carry out, or its character to and high culture, he has been immensely maintain. This is a matter upon which indebted, as a political and social critic, the managers must be the judges, without to the speaking-trumpet-the Pall Mall appeal; and they will mentally have their Gazette which personal accidents placed own notions of the way in which the sub- in his power. There was not another ject-matter should be, so to speak, mixed organ in the world in which his peculiar or beaten-up. The nicest shade of differ- communications would have been welence or resemblance or relevancy or irrel-comed and would have found, at once, so evancy (with reference to other articles favourable and so large an audience. The or to current topics) may determine the acceptance, the rejection, the insertion, or the delay of an article. Then, again, reasons of personal feeling often induce a kind and conscientious editor to "pack" his periodical in a manner which he would, for its immediate prosperity's sake, prefer to avoid. That is, he may feel it his duty - nay, even in rare cases, his interestto insert articles which the general principles of his procedure would certainly exclude. He might know that the public had had too much, for instance, of the Irish Church question, and yet be in such a position with regard to the author of an article too much on that subject as to feel that it would be unkind or even unfair to refuse that article. In fact, the considerations which determine the packing of a magazine are incalculably intricate. The question of the value of personal influence in advancing the beginner who is attempting to find his way into literature, has always, so far as my reading goes, been untruthfully described. We have been constantly told that in literature introductions are of no use; merit everything. But why should literature be unlike any other thing under heaven in this respect? Put the case of obtaining an audience wholly irrespective of profit. Here, the speaking-trumpet that falls to a man's lot is of the very utmost moment. If he happens to have something strikingly appropriate to say of an immediately exciting topic, he has a chance of being able Pall Mall Gazette was itself an accident, and the circumstances that gave him his speaking-trumpet were a sort of accident, and nothing else. For myself, while the most felicitous literary incident of my life was what people would call fortuitous as well that is, I was indebted to no introduction for it—I assert that it is mere rant and fustian to deny the value of introductions in literary business matters. They will not procure success for bad work, but they give a particular piece of ordinary good work the exceptional chance which is necessary for the acquisition of a footing. And for business purposes that is everything. It is true, all this applies more to journalism than to other kinds of literary work. But this just covers the largest field of all, and the field in which the competitors are, upon a superficial view, the most nearly equal. Now, the hasty view which, alone, an overworked editor is able to take of the pretensions of a new-comer is necessarily superficial. So very few persons have the requisite faculties for judging of poetry, that that is in a very peculiar position. Here, and in the better sorts of fiction, introduction can do - we may say nothing. Perhaps a real gift for poetry, or a real gift for storytelling, is of all literary gifts the one that is most sure to find its own way. The number of persons who can tell a good story from a bad one is very considerable; so that though a new-comer, with startling peculiarities, may be snubbed here and there, the beginner in fiction, if really capable, stands a good chance. On the other hand, though the number of people who can tell poetry from mere good verse is few, it is easy, a certain degree of merit once reached, to get poetry printed. And then, the few who do know poetry, have a quick scent for it. So those who have cast bread upon the waters in that kind may rest tranquil-they have been, or will be, found out. Besides, though it costs something, it is not so very difficult to get a volume of poetry into print nowa-days. And poetry is, I repeat, almost certain to be found out by somebody. This remains true, in spite of the fact that there is sometimes a conflict of verdicts. The least competent and most adverse critic of Keats and Wordsworth would not have denied, upon being pressed, that the differentia of their minds was poetic; the rest, it will be observed, was mere matter of (what is called) taste. The radical question put by the man who thinks he sings is, "Do you acknowledge this for singing?" All the praise in the critic's ink-pot that does not go to this point should be held worthless; all the blame that admits this point may be borne with, however unjust or foolish. The following passage is quoted from an American periodical of high standing: "Perhaps no taste differs more than literary taste. Men of trained judgment and rare culture differ from each other almost as much as the boor and the philosopher. This is shown in the popular magazines, not only occasionally, but constantly. What the Galaxy rejects, Putnam prints with entire readiness; the esSay Harper's repudiates meets with favour in the Atlantic; and the poem the Atlantic declines with thanks' is published in the Broadway. Every month the editor of some one of the monthlies discovers in his rivals the manuscript he has returned to the owner, while he himself prints and praises what his contemporaries have pronounced unworthy. We know a very clever try-who sends her composition at one time, first to the Atlantic, then to Harper's, then to the Galaxy; next time, first to the Galaxy, &c., just reversing the order. Some one of the serials usually rejects it, but another always accepts; and she says candidly she would not give a fig for the judgment of any of them. Concerning the taste of critics, who shall decide?" authoress - one of the most famous in the coun This crude bit of comment may well be taken as an illustration of some of the foregoing hints. No doubt one magazine may reject what another will insert. Of course a religious Review might decline what a secular Review might welcome. But that is not all, or half; for the question goes far beyond "literary taste." The condition of the editor's pigeon-holes is a ruling element in the case. The Galary may reject a piece of "subjective" verse because it is already overdone with sueh matter, while Putnam may run short of it just then. Or, again, an article may be declined because if published in a particular magazine it might "take the edge off" an article or series of articles projected at the time. If an editor had engaged a well-known contributor to write for him a set of papers on a given topic, he would almost certainly decline to insert a casual paper on the same or a similar topic which happened to reach him at about the same date. In fact, there are a hundred, or a hundred thousand, ways in which a really good article may be "not suited to our pages." From The Academy. SONGS OF THE SIERRAS.* THIS is a truly remarkable book. To glance through its pages is to observe a number of picturesque things picturesquely put, expressed in a vivid flowing form and melodious words, and indicating strange, outlandish, and romantic experiences. The reader requires no great persuasion to leave off mere skimming and set to at regular perusal; and, when he does so, he finds the pleasurable impression confirmed and intensified. Mr. Miller is a Californian, domiciled between the Pacific and the Sierra Nevada, who has lived and written "on the rough edges of the frontier." Last winter he published, or at least printed, in London, a small volume named Pacific Poems, consisting of two of the compositions now republished-one of them in a considerably modified form. San Francisco and the city of Mexico were known to him; but it is only in the summer of 1870 that he for the first time saw and detested New York, and soon afterwards reached London. Thus much he gives us to know in a few nervous, modest, and at the same time resolute words of preface — reproduced here, with a postscript, from his former believe that there are crudities in his volume. He is prepared to be told and to book; but he adds significantly, "poetry 'Songs of the Sierras." By Joaquin Miller. Longmans and Co. may are neither few nor insignificant with me is a passion that defies reason.' Mr. Miller's preface would command sympathetic respect even if his verses did not. We feel at once that we have to deal with a man, not with a mere vendor of literary wares. To argue with him would be no use, and to abuse him no satisfaction. Luckily we are not called upon to do either; but, while responding to his invitation to point out without reticence what shows as faulty, we have emphatically to pronounce him an excellent and fascinat-her with fervid affection. An Indian woing poet, qualified, by these his first works, to take rank among the distinguished poets of the time, and to greet them as peers. The volume, of some 300 pages, contains only seven poems. The last of these- a tribute to the glorious memories of Burns and Byron-is comparatively short: all the rest are compositions of some substantial length, and of a narrative character, though Ina - considerably the longest of all-assumes a very loose form of dramatic dialogue. Mr. Miller treats of the scenes and personages and the aspects of life that he knows knows intimately and feels intensely; and very novel scenes, strange personages, and startling aspects these are. This fact alone would lend to his book a singular interest, which is amply sustained by the author's contagious ardour for what he writes about, and his rich and indeed splendid powers of poetic presentment. A poet whose domestic hearth is a hut in an unfathomable cañon whose forest has been a quinine wood, permeated by monkeys, man became his companion in gold ventures, and, it might be inferred, his concubine, were we not told that she was "as pure as a nun." One day she challenges him with his undying love for the beautiful blonde: he returns a short answer, and takes no very definite measures for shielding her from a raging storm which comes on over the cañon on the instant. She, excited to a semi-suicidal frenzy, dies in the storm. The gold-washer, fencing with the horrid remorse at his heart, and keeping a vision of beautiful blonde hair before his mental eye, goes off to rediscover Annette Macleod. He sees the very image of her at a town-pump; but, when he calls her name, it turns out that this blooming damsel is but the daughter of the Annette of olden-days, long since married. The gold-washer, thus drinking the dregs of bitterness from both his affaires de cœur, returns to his gold-finding, resolved to make of this the gorgeous and miserable work of his remaining years. He is a splendid personage in Mr. Miller's brilliant and bounding verses, and only "less than Archangel ruined." The second poem, With Walker in Nicaragua, appears to relate the author's own youthful experiences. Walker, whom we English have so freand whose song-bird is a cockatoo, and to quently stigmatized as "the filibuster," is whom these things, and not the converse presented as a magnificent hero of the of them, are all the genuine formative ex- class to whom human laws form no obstaperiences and typical realities or images of cle. Mr. Miller is as loyal to his memory a life, is sure to tell us something which as was ever Jacobite to that of a Charles we shall be both curious and interested to Edward, and probably with better reason. think over. There is an impassible gap There is a wild, mysterious, exploratory between the alien couleur locale of even so splendour in this poem, a daring sense of great a poet as Victor Hugo in such a work adventure, and a glorious richness of pasas Les Orientales, and the native recipiency sion both for brown-skinned Montezuman of one like our Californian author, whose maidenhood and for the intrepid military very blood and bones are related to the chief, which place the work very high inthings he describes, and from whom a per- deed both among Mr. Miller's writings ception and a knowledge so extremely un- (we think it clearly the best of all, with like our own are no more separable than the possible exception of Arazonian) and his eyes and his brain. Such being the ex- in the poetry of our time generally. Walkceptional nature of Mr. Miller's subject-mat- er, of course, is seized and shot before ter, the best way of obtaining some specific the poem closes; and the Montezuman idea of his work, both in its beauties and damsel comes to as deplorable an end in its defects which latter no doubt as the gold-adventuress of the preceding "Like shuttles hurried through and through The thread a hasty weaver weaves," vigorous and successful intent to murder which would have done credit to the Southern chivalry enrolled in the KuKlux Klan. At length, however, a scene of rural domestic bliss promotes milder thoughts. The outlaw returns within the pale of civilization, and enters on the career which has at last made him an Alcalde. When the enlightened but too confiding jurist has revealed thus much, the wily advocate starts up, denounces him, and orders his instant seizure: but to no avail. The Alcalde, who at the moment" seemed taller than a church's spire," declines to be handled, and grinds his drinking-glass to powder; and then 66 He turned on his heel, he strode through the Grand as a god, so grandly tall, And never was known or heard of more. We now come to the last of the poems the semi-dramatic composition named Ina. It is a curious guazzabuglio (to use an expressive Italian term) of picturesque perceptions both of external nature and of the human heart, along with a chaos of the constructive or regulative powers of the understanding. Every now and then there is a sort of titanic and intrinsically poetical utterance in it which reminds one of Marlowe; a like splendour and far reach of words, with a like- or indeed a greater poem. After a courtship the raptures of which are only paralleled by its purity, she makes frantic efforts to reach her lover, now retreating by sea, along with his fellows, after a military disaster. She follows in a canoe; brandishes in the eye of the steersman a dagger which her lover had given her as a token sure to be recognized; but somehow (we are not told why) no recognition ensues, the lover himself being lulled in uneasy slumbers, and the maiden topples over and is drowned. Californian, the next poem in the series, has very little story amid lavish tracts of description Or we might rather say of picture-writing, for Mr. Miller executes his work of this kind more by vivid flashes of portrayal and of imagery than by consecutive defining. A votary of the ancient Indian or Montezuman faith does any amount of coufused miscellaneous fighting, and is slain the woman who loves him casts herself into the beacon-fire. The Last Taschastas is another story of native valour and turmoil. An Indian chief of advanced age makes a raid upon the settlers: he is vanquished, seized, and put in a boat to be transported, with his beautiful daughter, to some remote region. While on the boat he darts a poisoned arrow at his principal adversary, and kills him: he is then shot down, and no further account of the fate of his daughter is vouchsafed. The Tale of the Tall Alcalde, which follows, has something which, according to Mr. Miller's standard, almost simulates a plot. We are first introduced to an Alcalde in contempt of quiet common sense, and the town of Renalda, of abnormal stature, overstraining of the framework. Ina is a and of a dignified virtue equally abnormal passionate young woman, in love with At a symposium in honour of the Annun- Don Carlos, but resolved upon marrying ciation, the Alcalde is induced by a con- in faithful espousals, a suitor of heavy certed and insidious plot, as it may be purse and advanced age, with the scarcegathered, between an advocate and a ly disguised motive, however, of afterpriest to narrate his early adventures. wards enjoying, in the arms of the ardent These prove to have been of a sort by Carlos, a youthful widowhood which is no means consonant to the Olympian calm distinctly forecast as a very early continof his mature years. In youth, with an gency. Carlos does not quite "see it," Indian girl whom he loved, he had joined and goes off in disgust to lead a wild hunta band of Indians, had fought in their ing-life in the mountains - rough goodcause, and had been imprisoned. The fellowship mellowed by misogyny. Ina girl seeks him out in his durance, but can- soon realizes the summit of her ambition. not obtain access to him save at the price Her aged bridegroom dies; she joins the of her chastity. Loathing the wretch hunting party in the disguise of a young who demands this sacrifice, she neverthe-mountaineer; and, after hearing from her less consents, but with a firm resolve not companions various salvoes of story-telling to survive the desired moment when her to the dishonour of the serpent woman, lover shall be liberated. This result is eventually obtained; and the Indian heroine, revealing her shame and her self-devotion, stabs herself to the heart. The future Alcalde, after this catastrophe, Vows revenge; and prowls about with a she reveals and proposes herself to Don Carlos. The Don tells her that he cannot think of demeaning himself to a lady who comes to him second-hand; and the Donna, plucking up her spirit, as well as a vigorous modicum of good sense which has |