Literature and Patronage

IT is the modern habit to sneer at the relations that used to exist between the literary man and his patron. We are told of the “ servility ” of writers like Horace and Erasmus in addressing natural compliments to Maecenas and Henry VIII. Yet the situation pleased both parties as long as it lasted, and it had certain merits to which we seem rather blind. It is a pregnant saying of Dr. Johnson, a supreme critic of life, if not of letters, “ He who pleases to write must write to please.” Were it not better, then, to seek to please a wealthy gentleman of taste and culture than a vast rabble who demand so many million pages of writing per annum, to supply a mental opiate in the intervals of toiling, eating, and sleeping ? A group of scholars like Colet, More, and Erasmus knew that the young King Henry VIII. took a personal interest in their work, and could also give excellent criticism. But the modern man of letters is a mere name to his readers, who are so far from being critics that the quality of his work comes to vary inversely with the extent of its circulation. The works of great masters like Scott are indeed read by the mob ; but that very rarely happens while the master is alive, and so long as he lives he is discouraged by financial and all other considerations from doing his best work.

The results reach farther than may at first appear. The public are too busy to hire their own entertainers, and so we have a special class of men called publishers and editors, who are indeed in some instances endowed with literary judgment, but far oftener exercise the functions of the popular showman in an itinerant exhibition. They will of course provide the ordinary programme, — the theological novel, the problem play, and the humanitarian poem; and they will probably also have a few freaks to amuse more volatile minds, — short-haired women who write of other worlds than ours, long-haired men of eccentric morals, and sexless beings whose thoughts run on nothing but sex.

This arrangement leaves the writer no means of subsistence, unless he contributes to some “ series ” emanating from the taste and fancy of the publisher, such as The World’s Greatest Boozefighters; and in any case he is usually thrown back upon journalism, — a process which only a few men like John Morley have survived.

The best work of the rising generation bears indelible marks of the editorial pencil, which is mainly responsible for its glaring defects. Mr. Dooley’s inimitable remarks on Rudyard Kipling might be applied to a whole school of popular novelists and poets. Many a modern novel reads, and is perhaps meant to read, as if it had been cabled across the Atlantic by an incompetent operator. The tendency is invading other departments of literature. There are ominous indications that the philosopher and the historian may also become little better than literary acrobats performing a regular round of circus tricks.

Something might be expected of men who wish to write, and have independent means. But how are they to be read except through the medium of publishers and editors ? The competition of the bread-winners is too strong, and the writers become merely a drug in the market. The republic of letters may share the experience of some other republics, and lose the services of her best citizens.

This is of course only one side of the situation, but it is sufficiently grave because it seems to be enlarging. The remedy might well be to do something toward the restoration of the old system of enlightened patronage ; and here is a chance for the cultured millionaire to subsidize a group of publishers and editors. who may be able to look to other matters besides circulation.