as a radiant personage whose whole time is devoted to idleness and pastime; who keeps a prolific mind in a sort of corn-sieve and lightly shakes a bushel of it out sometimes in an odd half-hour after breakfast.  It would amaze their incredulity beyond all measure to be told that such elements as patience, study, punctuality, determination, self-denial, training of mind and body, hours of application and seclusion to produce what they read in seconds, enter in such a career ... correction and recorrection in the blotted manuscript; consideration; new observations; the patient massing of many reflections, experiences, and imaginings for one minute purpose; and the patient separation from the heap of all the fragments that will unite to serve it—­these would be unicorns and griffins to them—­fables altogether.

And as it was, a quarter of a century ago, when those words were written, so it is now:  the phrase of ‘light literature’ as applied to fiction having once been invented, has stuck, with a vengeance, to those who profess it.

Yet to ‘make the thing that is not as the thing that is’ is not (though it may seem to be the same thing) so easy as lying.

Among a host of letters received in connection with an article published in the Nineteenth Century, entitled ’The Literary Calling and its Future,’ and which testify in a remarkable manner to the pressing need (therein alluded to) of some remunerative vocation among the so-called educated classes, there are many which are obviously written under the impression that Dogberry’s view of writing coming ‘by nature’ is especially true of the writing of fiction.  Because I ventured to hint that the study of Greek was not essential to the calling of a story-teller, or of a contributor to the periodicals, or even of a journalist, these gentlemen seem to jump to the conclusion that the less they know of anything the better.  Nay, some of them, discarding all theories (in the fashion that Mr. Carlyle’s heroes are wont to discard all formulas), proceed to the practical with quite an indecent rapidity; they treat my modest hints for their instruction as so much verbiage, and myself as a mere convenient channel for the publication of their lucubrations.  ’You talk of a genuine literary talent being always appreciated by editors,’ they write (if not in so many words by implication); ’well, here is an admirable specimen of it (enclosed), and if your remarks are worth a farthing you will get it published for us, somewhere or another, instanter, and hand us over the cheque for it.  Nor are even these the most unreasonable of my correspondents; for a few, with many acknowledgments for my kindness in having provided a lucrative profession for them, announce their intention of throwing up their present less congenial callings, and coming up to London (one very literally from the Land’s End) to live upon it, or, that failing (as there is considerable reason to expect it will), upon me.