as a profession, almost as cut-and-dried as church or law; a lad may go into it with full parental approval, with ready avuncular support.  I heard not long ago of an eminent lawyer, who had paid a couple of hundred per annum for his son’s instruction in the art of fiction—­yea, the art of fiction—­by a not very brilliant professor of that art.  Really, when one comes to think of it, an astonishing fact, a fact vastly significant.  Starvation, it is true, does not necessarily produce fine literature; but one feels uneasy about these carpet-authors.  To the two or three who have a measure of conscience and vision, I could wish, as the best thing, some calamity which would leave them friendless in the streets.  They would perish, perhaps.  But set that possibility against the all but certainty of their present prospect—­fatty degeneration of the soul; and is it not acceptable?

I thought of this as I stood yesterday watching a noble sunset, which brought back to my memory the sunsets of a London autumn, thirty years ago; more glorious, it seems to me, than any I have since beheld.  It happened that, on one such evening, I was by the river at Chelsea, with nothing to do except to feel that I was hungry, and to reflect that, before morning, I should be hungrier still.  I loitered upon Battersea Bridge—­the old picturesque wooden bridge, and there the western sky took hold upon me.  Half an hour later, I was speeding home.  I sat down, and wrote a description of what I had seen, and straightway sent it to an evening newspaper, which, to my astonishment, published the thing next day—­“On Battersea Bridge.”  How proud I was of that little bit of writing!  I should not much like to see it again, for I thought it then so good that I am sure it would give me an unpleasant sensation now.  Still, I wrote it because I enjoyed doing so, quite as much as because I was hungry; and the couple of guineas it brought me had as pleasant a ring as any money I ever earned.

XXII.

I wonder whether it be really true, as I have more than once seen suggested, that the publication of Anthony Trollope’s autobiography in some degree accounts for the neglect into which he and his works fell so soon after his death.  I should like to believe it, for such a fact would be, from one point of view, a credit to “the great big stupid public.”  Only, of course, from one point of view; the notable merits of Trollope’s work are unaffected by one’s knowledge of how that work was produced; at his best he is an admirable writer of the pedestrian school, and this disappearance of his name does not mean final oblivion.  Like every other novelist of note, he had two classes of admirers—­those who read him for the sake of that excellence which here and there he achieved, and the undistinguishing crowd which found in him a level entertainment.  But it would be a satisfaction to think that “the great big stupid” was