Volume 1 - Electric Scotland

438 WILLIAM BLACKWOOD.
veying another and another episode of the self-same
story—never ended till his life did. His strange
being, so obscured by wilful mysteries, so swept by
agitations and despairs, fluttered along its devious
course, always falling into the same pitfalls, always
pledging the same vows. It is not for a member of
the same fraternity — than which there is no trade
more tempted to transgress the rules of prudence and
believe in its full force of labour that to-morrow will
be as to-day, if not more abundant—to throw the first
stone at him. In these days there was scarcely an
individual in the literary profession who did not
transgress these rules and presume more or less upon
that power of evolving a liA^ng, not to say many things
fairer than mere living and more exhilarating, out of
nothing. We begin to be prudent now, it is said, and
to understand that the fairy gold, like other gold,
must be laid up in garners and put to vulgar interest
if we are to have peace in our minds. But in former
days nobody had as yet put forth that doctrine except
as a theory. Our excellent friend Anthony TroUope
may be said, we think, to be the founder of literature,
or rather of fiction, as a serious profession, followed
so many hours every day, and bringing in so much
steady income. Before that there was always more
or less of a happy chance in the rewards of authorship,
—Scott himself being so much of the order of the
miraculous, and his pecuniary successes, though so
great, yet small in comparison with his fame, that no
one could count upon him as a precedent : not to say
that the high and lofty presumption in the public
mind concerning the author, that (notwithstanding all
the hungry traditions of Grub Street) he was a being