Every Book on Its Own Bottom

WIDE reading in current literature will show that rarely is a book printed which does not contain at least one thought or one aspect of thought worth remembering. But it takes a wise man to find the thought. What puzzles him in his search for atoms of wisdom is that often the book from which he got least is taken up behind him with babbling approval. Until he has learned by experience to pay no attention to the shouting of the multitude, he is often tempted to revise his judgment. But he learns at last that the noise, like the wag of a dog’s tail or the pecking of a bird, is mainly due to reflex action. It interests him, then, to learn the cause of the outcry. He finds cases in which some intrinsic quality of a book, irksome perhaps to him, has attracted the public. In this case, as one to whom nothing human is foreign, he adds something to his knowledge of literary possibilities. But usually he discovers that what stirred the imagination of the people was not within the covers of the book.

The classic example of this sort of thing — not to make invidious remarks about what happens under our noses several times a year — is Pomfret’s Choice, a poem which, so far as printed testimony goes, has been read by only two men of the present generation, though it was preëminently the end-ofthe-century book in 1699. Observe that the end of the century with its attendant phenomena is no novelty in the history of literature. The Bishop of London disapproved of Pomfret’s Muse. Pomfret’s career as a clergyman was blasted before it began, but his book sold as if there were a lurking devil in its innocuous pages. A smooth, easy, languid, shallow copy of verses became the talk of a nation because a bishop sat down on the author. History repeats itself. Only a little while ago an American archbishop performed a similar office for a well-known recent novel.

All this having become a matter of experience, and the world in general being, like the men of Athens, diligent in search of new things, why not try systematically the plan of putting all books on their individual merits without reference to the author ? In more than one sense of the word, a book is a living organism with a span of active existence more or less extended. A sickly book ought not to borrow vitality from a strong book because it owes its being to the same author; nor should a good book be handicapped because it belongs to an ignoble family.

The world does its part in trying to discourage the majority of authors by remunerating them scantily or not at all. But an additional measure of some kind is needed. Why not, then, enforce anonymity by the gradual pressure of an ethical reform in which the rights of books shall be considered as those of dumb brutes are now ? At present the tendency seems to be toward an opinion that anonymity is unjustifiable. This seems to be an outcome worthy of an age in which the gossipy commercial traveler is the most conspicuous figure. If literature is merely a trade or profession, notoriety is, of course, indispensable, and concealment is required only to injure an enemy or a rival. But if literature in its highest forms, the only forms worth studying, is an inspiration, then it were well put on a level where the arts of notoriety and mere self-seeking cannot flourish. Anonymity, if it became general, would stop the personal allusions to authors which make the cheapest kind of fame in these modern days. It would obviate all that mass of paragraphic information often called literary notes, and quite as often devoid of anything literary ; it would destroy that parasitic journalism which has grown up on the vanity of authorship ; and it would turn the vacuous curiosity of the public back upon itself, where it belongs. The public would then either read books or not, as it chose ; but it would be forced to talk more about literature, and less about literary persons. The finest episode of literary history in the last hundred years was the anonymity of Waverley. People would, indeed, persistently ask of a book that attracted them, “ Who wrote it ? ” But they would look in the book itself for an answer, something which is not done uniformly now.

If the writer outlives anonymity, the title of concealment becomes a term of affection. Witness George Eliot. If it veils a popular author to the threshold of the tomb, it may be rent only to discover a life history touching in its completeness, which would have been blotted by daily publicity. It may keep alive for ages a vivid sense of the perils in which humanity has established its rights, as the fame of the Letters of Obscure Men has done. It may even keep a worthless book alive unnumbered centuries, — and this should be a solace to authors, if shut out from ordinary commercial devices for giving their books renown. Nobody knows who wrote the Epistles of Phalaris; consequently, a library has been written about them. If anybody knew their author, nobody would think of reading them again. An equally worthless book of the last century, The Letters of Junius, bids fair to have the same endless repute ; and there is an American novel, published some years ago, which promises to live in the well-kept mystery of its origin.

Nobody knows better than the wise man that he loves books which never become popular, and that books which become popular in spite of his praise are subject to the same law of oblivion as those are which succeed with the aid of his disapproval. He is conscious that the theme and the treatment of the theme are the real issue, and that authors should be considered only necessary instrumentalities. If a modern gossipmonger is asked about a book, he can often answer with anecdotes about the author. Suppose we reform this and shut the fool’s mouth.