BACK TO SHAKESPEARE CHAPTER I PRELIMINARY OBSERVATIONS DR JOHNSON, more suo, once gave utterance to the monumental observation, that no ever wrote a book except for money. The underlying thought in his mind was probably the thought that obsesses and distresses all would-be authors, and which they all alike experience, namely, is any remuneration but hard cash and plenty of it, an adequate reward for all the labour, anxiety, toil, and care that even a very trifling publication entails? If Dr Johnson lived in these days he would have had to reverse or greatly modify his dictum - for books are as cheap and abundant as blackberries and say that no one but a very foolish and inexperienced person would ever expect to make money out of a book. Indeed it is proverbially as difficult to turn pen and ink into cash as it is to extract gold from the sea. Byron found it necessary even in his day when books were comparative rarities, to warn one of his contemporaries on this very point. He adjures him Amos Cottle by name, - to avoid the risks, and abandon the attempt altogether : "Oh! Amos Cottle for a moment think, And if there is but little cash to be obtained, there is possibly less credit; on the contrary, one stands to lose both, if one possesses even a little of either. "Oh that mine enemy would write a book," was the observation of an astute, if cynical, man of the world, paraphrasing presumably Job's cry of agony, "Oh that mine adversary had written a book." So the cash and the credit must be left to take care of themselves. But apart from these there are certain minor compensations. An author is in very much the same position as an angler, and goes through much the same anxieties and experiences. He has to bait his line skilfully, and wait patiently for a rise; if the fish fail to respond in some waters, let him rebait his hook and try his luck again in some other locality. This is a somewhat long and tedious process, but so is fishing, and yet there are some natures that enjoy fishing more than any pastime in the world. But apart from compensation pecuniary or otherwise, there is to some minds a real pleasure and satisfaction in the arrangement and composition of words, and in the endeavour to discover the most suitable ones to capture and fix, any particular thought, especially when one is discussing the greatest of all masters of the English tongue, and endeavouring to follow on, appreciate, and appropriate, if one can, something at any rate, however small, of his method. and power of manipulation. And, after all, is not true poetry for its own sake, better than fine gold? What does Professor Palgrave say of it, in the introduction to his famous anthology, "The Golden Treasury": "Poetry gives treasures 'more golden than gold,' leading us in higher and |