INTRODUCTION.

I DESIRE in this Introductory chapter to present the Literary Life in outline to my readers. I cannot hope that what I have to say will be altogether new but I do hope that I may be able to present some points of freshness: that I may be able to throw some light upon the conditions of modern literature, which may lead up to the chapters which follow.

First, then, what do we mean by the Literary Life?

Now, if you look at the census of 1891, you will find returned as authors, editors, and journalists in England and Wales the number of about 5800. As authors, editors, and journalists do often overlap and run into one another's field of work, we will not try to distinguish them. But you would carry away a very false impression of the numbers engaged in literary work if you think this number represents all, or even a half, of those who produce literature. There are clergymen, professors, lecturers, teachers of all kinds, lawyers, doctors, men in every branch of science, artists of all kinds, all of whom pro

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duce literary work. Literature is universal, and embraces everything: and the number of those who are literary men by profession is small indeed compared with the number of those who are literary men in fact. Take, for instance, the clergy. Consider how many of them are literary men-writers of books-books on theology, on scholarship, on archæology, on criticism, on history, in poetry, in fiction. Think what we should lose if such men as Dean Stanley, Chalmers, Stubbs, Lightfoot, Maurice, Kingsley, Martineau, had never written. And so in other professions. For one man who actually lives by literary work there are three or four to whom the production of literature is an occasional event, perhaps an occasional necessity. I think we should not be far wrong in placing the whole number of men and women engaged more or less in literary work at something like 20,000.

When, therefore, we speak of the Literary Life, it should include all those who produce literature. In common usage, however, we generally apply the term of Literary Life only to those who follow the profession of letters. And it is of them, and to them, especially that I wish to speak.

Then, again, what do we mean by literature? For my own part, I do not limit the word to the few precious gems, one or two in a generation, which are granted to a people. I include the

whole of current printed work-good and bad— the whole production of the day-whatever is offered. I am quite aware that most of it deservedly dies at once: but it is still part of current literature. The great works of the masters form our National literature: all the works of the present day taken together form the current literature.

It is a very common, and a very foolish, affectation to pretend that there is no profession of letters and this in the face of the obvious and notorious fact that thousands of persons do actually live by that profession. Let us not be carried away by this nonsense. It may be that out of the thousands who now live by letters there are not twenty who will be remembered in a hundred years that does not affect the question at all. It is enough for us to remember that there are these thousands who actually live by producing attempts at literature, and who do really lead, whether in its higher forms or not, the Literary Life.

Yet one more definition. In everything that is said, or that may be read, about the profession of literature and literary property, let us most carefully keep quite separate and distinct in our minds the literary value of a work and the commercial value of a work. There need not be any connection at all between the two. What I mean will be understood exactly if we ask what would have been the price paid by an edi