But there be few beginners of this mark, most begin so feebly because
they begin so fearfully. They are already too discouraged, and can
scarce do themselves justice. It is easier to write more or less well
and agreeably when you are certain of being published and paid, at least,
than to write well when a dozen rejected manuscripts are cowering (as
Theocritus says) in your chest, bowing their pale faces over their chilly
knees, outcast, hungry, repulsed from many a door. To write excellently,
brightly, powerfully, with these poor unwelcomed wanderers, returned
MSS., in your possession, is difficult indeed. It might be wiser to do
as M. Guy de Maupassant is rumoured to have done, to write for seven
years, and shew your essays to none but a mentor as friendly severe as M.
Flaubert. But all men cannot have such mentors, nor can all afford so
long an unremunerative apprenticeship. For some the better plan is _not_
to linger on the bank, and take tea and good advice, as Keats said, but
to plunge at once in mid-stream, and learn swimming of necessity.
One thing, perhaps, most people who succeed in letters so far as to keep
themselves alive and clothed by their pens will admit, namely, that their
early rejected MSS.
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