WRITERS AND VOGUES.

Dominion, Volume 2, Issue 478, 10 April 1909, Page 9

WRITERS AND VOGUES.

People have often remarked on the brevity oi the vogue enjoyed by many novelists nowadays. A now novel creates a sensation and tor months nothing else is talked about, aneedces about the author's life and habits are passed from newspaper to. newspaper, and then there is silence. Some ten years later, perhaps, a short review in a journal reminds us ot a half-forgotten name, and we-learn with surprise thai in the meantime the bearer M it has been an industrious writer of books, not one. of which has stirred the pulse of the public nor even become known to any but the most assiduous clients of. the circulating ODrary ihere are reasons/for this. One is »at the writer's vein may early have petered p. .there are men who can produce-one vW work but who cannot follow it up with ;™v 'rf for ,that reason the hearty relation .which ought to have been only a send--,n,i tV plenckl „ literar y career,proves the Jt as ' w ?" as the beginning. But »nother reason is the industry of the' imitators Imitation is almost a literary calling by Znl m T Ifa are scores of clever »enmen who on', the appearance of a striking >ook seize upon it, analyse its methods, and ill their own pages with its' "thunder," so [hat before the original author has had time * make good, his success the market is glutedwith books of tbo only sort ho can produce, amUhe public are already satiated with L-i u C W y ODC ? callecl for - The y "e a forBidable_ dinger for the professional author, ind that the greatest have suffered from them l*l ™^ n fr °T' thls wit *y ant l modest entry te Sir Walter Scj^V 'Journal." "I am something hko Captam,Bobadil,". says Sir Walter' who trained up a hundred gentlemen to hght very nearly, if not altogether,-as well as t ;' .• sd far I ' am convinced of this, that I believe wore I to publish tho ' Canon{ato .Chronicles'; without.my namo (nom do ;uorro, I mean) the event' would be a corollary » tho fable of tho peasant who mado the real ?ig squeak against the imitator, while the lapionfc audience hissed the poor grunter as if mforior to the biped in its own language." Evidently if a writer is to perpetuate; his roguo he must do ono of two things. He must either bo able to put into his work such of genius as his imitators cannot capture, or, when his.imitators have overtakon him in one. lino of work, must striko out another equally acceptable to tho public. In that _ case he will attain' what, as distinguished from a' more' vogue, / may bo called : a settled popularity. . That is the blue ribbon of the calling of letters. It is what writers, for.'the best of ronsohs, set their caps at. It. not only puts a man on a favourable footing with his creditors, raises •.him out of tho rank and file, and. classifies

him with his real congeners, but furnishes him with a passport into tho society of those whom ho most esteems. There nro writers to whom such recognition is almost a necessity. Tennyson confessed himself to bo such. Ho used to tell tho story of the young • farmer whoso,, frionds conspired to assure him that ho was looking desperately ill, and who succeeded so well that tho-young man took to bed in good earnest.: Ho meant that, tlfc critics remaining hostile if his circle of friends had unanimously told him his poetry was mere verso ho would have desisted from writing and ront his singing robes. Men of a robustor fibre, however, do not require tho public voico to confirm thorn in their belief in their own powers, and they fight a stark battlo' for popularity. That in tho case of a great and genial spirit like Browning tho fight does not embitter is shown by Miss Masson's recent anecdote. When tho poet was asked whether tho importunities of so many admirers did not weary him, bo replied: "On tho contrary, I have waited forty years for this, and I enjoy it."—" Manchester Guardian."