Author page

“ The words in prose ought to express the intended meaning, and no more; if they attract attention to themselves, it is, in general, a fault. In the very best styles, as Southey's, you read page after page, understanding the author perfectly, without once taking notice of the medium of communication;—it is as if he had been speaking to you all the while. ”

“ Authors, musical and literary, write more often to fill a demand, subjectively felt perhaps, than to create one or to establish a form representative of their nation or section, though occasionally, when the author is a genius and fearlessly gives expression to his own divinity, regardless of precedent, he finds himself responsible for a new order, though in that case the individuality of the author is the leaven that leaveneth the lump, and not the locality.
We are only beginning, as a nation, to recognize music as an essential to general culture. ”

“ Certainly no writer ever dealt with the members of any profession with such completeness and without ceasing to interest a reader from page to page, from chapter to chapter, from volume to volume. Fancy any writer venturing upon five long novels with all the chief characters solicitors or solicitors' wives and daughters! ”

“ The Author trusts that he has conveyed the information to the reader in the most simple manner, his object being to make it a book of instruction rather than a mere work of words, whose tendency is rather to perplex than aid. ”

“ The chief of these obstacles is the deep and sincere interest which every author feels in his own work and which he imagines will be communicated automatically to the reader. 'We are seldom tiresome to ourselves.' Every book that can be called a book has had one interested and excited reader. ”

“ Those readers who rise from the last pages of a long historical work, covering several volumes and hundreds or thousands of pages, with a clear central conception of the whole work are profoundly grateful to the author. ”

“ So in all work in composition, select a subject that readily lends itself to the form of discourse demanded; or, conversely, select the form of discourse suitable for presenting most effectively your material.
Author’s Individuality. If an author is writing for other purposes than for conscious practice, he should choose the form of discourse in which he can best work, and to which he can best shape his material. Some men tell stories well; others are debaters; while yet others are wonderfully gifted with eloquence. ”

“ In former times criticism was busy with the questions of technique, with matters of rhetoric and grammar; a writer's work furnished opportunities for discussing how near to old ideas of authorship the author approached. To-day we study an author in connection with his own life and with ours. ”

“ Independent of all vicissitude and change, his pages speak in every age to all men who are able to realize his thought; and thus continue their inspiring, elevating, and ennobling work, even to the end of time. ”

“ It is in such places that you will find the description of literature you are in want of. You must be up and doing, sir; it will not do for an author, especially a young author, to be idle in this town. ”

“ The first condition of modern progress in novel-writing, as in other more serious branches of learning, was that the author should be free to look about him, to reflect and choose, to pick up his ideas and his matter anyhow. ”

“ The writing of essays and conversations, set in a framework of scenery and incident, and delineating character admirably though only incidentally, is the field of literature in which the author stands without a rival. ”

“ A neat little library might be formed of the books and pamphlets that have been written upon this 'vexed question,' and the name of every man that was at all eminent at the time of their publication—and of a great many too that were by no means eminent—has been at some time or other suggested as the author. ”

“ But novelists of another class prefer to admit frankly to the reader that the narrator who stands apart from all the characters and writes about them in the third person is the author himself. They give a personal tone to the narrative; they assert their own peculiarities of taste and judgment, and never let you forget that they, and they alone, are telling the story. The reader has to see it through their eyes. ”

“ Otherwise I should not have been asked to write one about the lighter work of an author who in virtue of a shelf-full of books comprehending all varieties of literary activity—novels and tales, biography, autobiography, history, linguistics, literary and social criticism, the drama, versification and verse as well as prose, even juvenile fiction—is widely recognized both at home and abroad as one of the particularly representative men of letters of our time. ”

“ But here also one factor is making my work practically impossible or at least very difficult. As a rule the introduction is always written by a man who is at one with the author on the contents of the work. ”

“ The public—that is, the reading world made up of those who love the products of authorship—always takes an interest in the methods of work adopted by literary men, and is fond of gaining information about authorship in the act, and of getting a glimpse of its favorite, the author, at work in that "sanctum sanctorum"—the study. ”

“ They show, if we can read an author in his works, as plainly as words can speak, that he had sincerely repented his early sins and follies, and had fully realized those simple and sublime truths, which have been in all ages the stay and comfort of the wise and the good. We make one extract, which will prove our assertion, and more than compensate our reader for the interruption of the narrative. ”

“ To attempt an exhaustive treatment of any one writer, however eminent or however insignificant, to supply analyses of well-known books which are, or should be, on the same shelves as those which may hold these volumes, or to devote much space to the repetition of biographical facts—all this has seemed to lie outside the scope of the present work. ”

“ And the Art of Letters is the method by which a speaker or writer brings out in words, worthy of his subject, and sufficient for his audience or readers, the thoughts which impress him. Literature, then, is of a personal character; it consists in the enunciations and teachings of those who have a right to speak as representatives of their kind, and in whose words their brethren find an interpretation of their own sentiments, a record of their own experience, and a suggestion for their own judgments. ”

“ It is supposed, that by the act of writing in verse an Author makes a formal engagement that he will gratify certain known habits of association; that he not only thus apprizes the Reader that certain classes of ideas and expressions will be found in his book, but that others will be carefully excluded. ”

“ Only what happened is exactly what you are expecting, so why waste pages and pages in working you up to it, as if I was a grown-up author? The plainest words are the best, as some great author beautifully observes. ”

“ The object of 'Great Writers' is to 'furnish the public with interesting and accurate accounts of the men and women notable in modern literature.' The first volume, now before us, is on Longfellow, by the Editor, and gives, in the space of 180 pages, a detailed account of the poet's life, an analysis of his work, and an essay on his place in literature. ”

“ From his familiar handling of all questions connected with the literary profession, and his confident judgements on them, it would be easy to tell that the author of the Lives was a professional man of letters. ”

“ It is quite true that the characteristics of the general author's style are found throughout the whole work.1 The Acts are no mere aggregate of scraps collected and rudely joined together, but the work of one author in the sense that whatever materials he may have used for its composition were carefully assimilated, and subjected to thorough and systematic revision to adapt them to his purpose. ”

“ It is the plan of the writers of the different volumes to enter into the real life of the peoples, and to bring them before the reader as they actually lived, labored, and struggled—as they studied and wrote, and as they amused themselves. ”

“ What I aim at rather is to expound the history and meaning of each work—to put the intelligent reader in such a position that he may judge for himself of the æsthetic beauty and success of the object before him. ”

“ As regards the particular consideration, when people see a book, and know that its author is skilled in the branch of science of which it treats, and is thoroughly versed therein, they judge its merits more fairly and apply themselves more seriously to read and remember it, so that both author and reader are better satisfied. ”

“ If, then, you feel like confidential writing, what may your subjects be? Essayists have written about three main classes of subjects: first always, people, their glory, their pathos, their sadness, and their whims; second, nature as it appeals to the writers in a personal way, reflecting their joys and sorrows, or contributing to their sense of pleasure, beauty, and companionship in the world; and third, matters of science, industry, art, literature, as the essayists think these affect the emotions of humanity. ”

“ When they write their books, they write the history of their inner life. You open a book and you read twenty lines, and in the tone and character of those twenty lines you seem to feel the beating of the writer’s pulse. ”

“ Those who seek for additional intelligence may easily obtain it from ordinarily available sources. To account for the origin of popular phrases and names has been the author’s sole design. To the best of his knowledge, no other work of the kind exists. ”

“ It would be in the highest degree instructive to follow, if we could, in his career step by step, an author who at once founded and carried his art to perfection, and to go through his works in the order of time. ”

“ In making up the volume I have drawn less on documents,—charters, messages, resolutions, declarations, instructions, statutes, and treaties,—than on those kinds of material in which the personality of the writer plays a greater part,—journals, letters, reports, discussions, and reminiscences. Whenever a piece could be found which is both characteristic and well written, it has been chosen over a piece which is equally accurate but has less literary merit. ”

“ We often gather from the page of a writer, a more correct transcript of his mental powers, than his conversation would have afforded us. Men of the most profound erudition have frequently dazzled so little in mixed company, that from their writings alone could be estimated the solidity of their talents, and the compass of their knowledge. ”

“ Those parallel Circumstances, and kindred Images to which we readily conform our Minds, are, above all other Writings, to be found in Narratives of the Lives of particular Persons; and there seems therefore no Species of Writing more worthy of Cultivation than Biography, since none can be more delightful, or more useful, none can more certainly enchain the Heart by irresistible Interest, or more widely diffuse Instruction to every Diversity of Condition. ”

“ It is usual for authors, in the preface to their productions, to cite to the reader all the good qualities of their writings, and especially those which their own imaginations suggest, and which, unless mentioned, might otherwise have been passed over unnoticed. ”

“ Where one author is cramped by a pen and hampered in the choice of the words that make writing the natural expression of thought, the other allows words and ideas to blend in interesting, amusing or touching homogeneity, always harmonious and always natural. ”

“ Hence it is that, though certain of the wise sayings or verses it contains may have authors assigned to them, no really ancient book claims to have an author—a human author. It is only later that the tendency is felt to satisfy the natural craving for a cause by assigning books to individual hands. ”

“ The intrinsic merits of an author are a question of very subordinate consideration to the keeping up the character of the work and supplying the town with a sufficient number of grave or brilliant topics for the consumption of the next three months! ”

“ And the result of these inquiries cannot fail to be beneficial, both to the writer of fiction and to the reader of fiction. To the story-teller himself they will serve as a stimulus and a guide, calling attention to the technic of his craft and broadening his knowledge of the principles of his art. To the idle reader even they ought to be helpful, because they will force him to think about the novels he may read and because they [pg xxiii] will lead him to be more exacting, to insist more on veracity in the portrayal of life and to demand more care in the method of presentation. ”

“ It is certainly in proportion as a biography is human or individual that it can have any lasting interest. Also, “Those relations are commonly of the most value in which the writer tells his own story.” ”

“ Circumstances of various kinds, and particularly ill-health, have thus put me, although a writer, into the position of a reader; and have made me ask myself, as I collected these fragments of my former studies, what can the study of history, particularly of the history of art and of other manifestations of past conditions of soul, do for us in the present?
All knowledge is bound to be useful. ”

“ That was a page read and turned over; I was busy now with this new page, and when the engine whistled on the grade, this page would be finished and another begun; and so the book of life goes on, page after page and pages without end--when one is young. ”