brings with it.' Fortunately, for Oliver there were gleams of brightness, and many hours of happiness in the future; but most of the Shining Ones have to confront a similar crisis, and struggle through it as best they can.

In July 1741, a friendless youth, seventeen years of age, entered Birmingham in search of work as a stocking weaver. He was a runaway apprentice-an outcast, as he said-for whom there seemed to be no place or purpose in this life. He had tramped all the way from Nottingham, sleeping in barns, or in the open air, or upon a butcher's block, as best he could. Robbed of the bags which contained his humble garments (for there are fiends who would plunder the poor of their last penny!) he found himself in that busy human hive, perhaps the forlornest soul in all its streets. He sat down to rest himself upon the north side of the old cross, near Philip Street,' when two men in aprons eyed him with some attention, and, then approaching, offered him a pint of ale; 'for,' said one of them, 'I know what it is to be a distressed traveller.' They took him to a public-house, where they treated him to bread, cheese, and beer, and then procured him a lodging where he slept for three halfpence. Twenty-seven years afterwards, this obscure individual was the respected overseer of the very parish which he had entered as the poorest of the poor. Thirty-one years afterwards he became one of the Judges of the Court of Request of that same district, and there, for nineteen years, he sat deciding suits between his fellowcitizens, upwards of a hundred thousand causes having passed through his hands during the interval. This man was William Hutton, author of much useful literature, whose life furnished. a splendid incentive to industry and to honourable exertion in face of the most adverse conditions. Could he have foreseen,

when he sat down upon the north side of the Old Cross near Philip Street,' on the evening in question, what a successful career was before him, might he not have danced-some would have got dishonourably drunk-out of pure gaiety of heart?

There are, of course, 'short cuts' to the glittering temple as well as long and rocky routes. Garrick and Johnson, to whom reference has just been made, are names in point. The former reached the summit by easy strides, and with unfluttered breath: the latter clambered painfully up the steep, mostly on hands and knees; and when the staff of patronage was held out to assist him, we know how disdainfully it was declined,—help had been delayed 'till he was indifferent and could not enjoy it; till he was solitary and could not share it; till he was known and did not want it!'

CHAPTER VII.

THAT IMPORTANT MANUSCRIPT.

ARRIVED, then, at the great mart for Literature, as for distinction of every description, the eager adventurer has to determine what practical steps he shall take to push his way to fame and fortune. Whilst searching for a publisher-and formerly it was requisite to inquire for a patron as well-let us learn something of the history of his all-important Manuscript. When the first flutterings of literary ambition agitated the aspirant's mind, and he began to dream of writing something which the world would receive with rapture

'To frame it knows not what excellent thing,

And win it knows not what sublime reward
Of praise and honour,'

the great question, of course, was What subject should he select? What form should his opening enterprise assume?

A famous French author planned a work entitled Ce qu'il-y-a dans une bouteille d'encre. And certainly many wonderful productions have issued out of a very tiny flask of ink. Those stories of genii cooped up in phials, and emerging when the stopper was withdrawn, their shapes expanding until they seemed to fill all space, must surely be allegorical representations of the great creations which have sometimes emerged from

slender bottles of japan. A vessel not larger than an ordinary decanter would suffice to hold in suspension a dozen of the most prized productions of human genius. The Iliad, the Eneid, the Divina Commedia would have needed no reservoir of profound capacity to supply the necessary fluid. A vinegar cruet would accommodate all that was required for Don Quixote, Robinson Crusoe, or Butler's Analogy. A thimble is not too small for all we have of Juvenal, Anacreon, or the poet Gray.

Curious that the same standish which, if it falls into fitting. hands, will prove the well-spring of some immortal work, may, if otherwise directed, serve only to indite bills of parcels or dry legal forms! None but a master in magic, or a true apprentice in the craft, can evoke the witching spirit from such a source, whatever incantations may be employed.

Imagine, then, a sanguine youth sitting down with the wonderful flask before him, and fondly inquiring what great composition shall be extracted? With undue self-depreciation, Mr. Ruskin says of his early efforts that, in the 'daily swelling foam of furious conceit,' he set himself in his seventeenth year 'in a state of majestic imbecility' to write a tragedy (of course Shakespearian) on a Venetian subject, in which the sorrows of his soul were to be 'enshrined in immortal verse. The fair heroine Bianca was to be endowed with the perfections of Desdemona and the brightness of Juliet, and Venice and love were to be described as never had been thought of before.'

In some cases, indeed, when a youth prepares for his great initial work he may be supposed to address a kind of caution to the manes of the Bard of Avon :-'Look now to your laurels, William Shakespeare! You have long reigned supreme in your particular domain. But take notice that a competitor such as

you have never yet encountered has now entered the lists, and intends to run you hard in public esteem. You will find it out, I daresay, before my beard is well grown, and if you are shelved before the age is well over I should not be greatly surprised!'

Not in this spirit, however, are works of sterling power or lasting value likely to be produced. Most probably the youth fixes upon some fanciful or imaginative theme. Why there should be such a tendency to resort to the realms of romance, and to seek employment there, is a fact which admits of easy solution. In the first place, fiction, generally speaking, requires very little research. A man may set up as a novelist without any noticeable stock in trade. In the selection of a profession thousands are determined by the simple question whether it demands the possession of much capital: if it does, they are excluded; if it does not, they rush into it without caring to inquire whether their brains are at all adapted to the duties involved. Of course a writer may expend as much thought and labour upon the production of a novel or a drama as would be required for a history or a philosophy. But few probably do. For one man who would deliberately undertake a Decline and Fall like Gibbon, or a History of Europe like Alison, there are scores who would think nothing of opening a series of novels almost as numerous as those of G. P. R. James or Alexandre Dumas. There are not many romancers certainly who could say, as Charles Reade did, 'I studied the art of fiction for fifteen years before I presumed to write a line.' And what he meant by study may be gathered from a little incident which Mr. Colman relates. On referring to a certain character in one of his books (Dr. Sampson), the author produced a huge sheet of cardboard divided into columns, and filled with

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