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Press, Volume LIII, Issue 9304, 3 January 1896, Page 2

The most artful booming often refuses to work, and, on the other hand, a publisher •who has in vain squandered money on pre« liminory puffing has many times the mortiJication of seeing a rival's book suddenly begin to sell by the thousand without any foregoing dark hints at all. Hence comes .. the freqr.ent confes3ion of those who have given a life to the business, that a great literary success is of the nature of a lottery. Go to the shelves blindfold, and the book ~ you pick out by chance is as likely to be in huge demand as the one you exercise your ' best judgment upon. But this really puts us upon the track of the true solution of the" ; problem. If the booming of books were - purely a literary phenomenon, then the .- literary judgment would not bo often be at fault about it. But it i 9 not primarily or /__ chiefly a literary phenomenon. It is a social phenomenon. The literary element is -■ secondary, often disappears altogether. A book jmay boom as furiously O3 a fashion in -•, dress may ravage, without there being, in the one case, a sound literary reason, an] , : , more than there is, in the other,' a sounc ~ aesthetic or hygienic reason.- There is some tiling essentially. unreasoning, if not' > irrational, about it, as there is about many ','-' other social phenomena. A panic sweeps through a nation, laughter ripples through a. '•$ theatre, or wailing surges through a camp*.-■ <fs\ meeting, and why the feeling' leaps from mind to mind in the way it does it is almost •:$ impossible to say. Wβ cannot do much "•$< more than accept the ultimate fact, nor can •'-: we in the case of a book which wins a great social, often falsely called a great literary, .;' success.