MUDIE MEASURE.
Ten lines make one page;
Ten pages make one point;
Two points make one chapter;
Five chapters make one episode;
Two episodes make one volume:
Three volumes make one tired.
[Sidenote: The Prop of Letters]
Is it a bright or a black day for an author when he gets so popular that the big advertisers insist on having him in any organ in which they place their advertisements? There can be no question but that it will be a black day for letters when the advertiser becomes the arbiter of literature, as this newest development forebodes. Where is this leprosy of advertisement to stop? Already it covers almost our whole civilisation. Already the advertiser is a main prop of the press.
A SONG OF ADVERTISEMENTS. (After Whitman.)
Give me Hornihand's Pure Mustard;
Give me Apple's Soap, with the negress laving the cherub;
Give me Bentley's Brimstone Tablets, and Ploughman's
Pills-those of the Little Liver.
(0 get me ads., you agent with the frock-coat and the fountain pen,
You with the large commissions
And the further discount on cash,
Get me ads., camarado!
Full pages preferred, though little ones not scorning,
For I scorn nothing, my brother.)
Give me the Alphabetical Snuff;
Give me Electric Batteries and False Teeth; also the Tooth-powders;
Give me all the Soft Soaps and the Soothing Syrups;
Give me all the Cocoas and Cough Lozenges and Corsets;
Give me Infants' Food-yea, the diet of babes and sucklings;
Give me the Nibs and the Beef Essences, and do not forget the
Typewriters.
(Forget nothing, camarado, for I, the poet, never forget
anything.)
Give me of the Fat of your agency, and of the Anti-Fat thereof!
And I will build you magazines, high-class and well illustrated;
Or pictureless a volonte, the latter with heavier articles.
Also newspapers, daily and weekly, with posters flamboyant,
That shall move the state and its pillars,
That shall preach the loftiest morals, elevating the masses,
By the strength of advertisements,
By the mighty strength of advertisements!
It has been suggested that flypapers should be so sprinkled as to produce an aesthetic design in dead flies, so as to introduce beauty into the homes of the poor. It would be more in harmony with the age to lay out our public gardens with floral injunctions to use B's hair-dye and C's corn-plaster. Brag and display are the road to riches, and the trail of vulgarity is over it all. I take credit to myself for having been among the first to cry in the wilderness; but the critics-bless them!-say it is all empty paradox.
[Sidenote: The Latter-day Poet]
The one exception to the hunger for advertisement is the modern bard. He achieves his vogue by limited editions, and takes pains to prevent himself being an influence. He acquires a factitious fame and an artificial value by printing only a few copies, thus making his paper and print sought after rather than his matter. It is all very well for a book to become rare by the vicissitudes of literary fortune, but this machine-made rarity can only be prized by people who value their possessions merely because other people haven't got them. The old minor poet was frenzied and unbought; the new is calm and "collected." At this rate the greatest poets would be those of whose works only one copy is extant-in MS.
Bend, bend the knee, and bow the head
To reverence the great unread,
The great unread and much-reviewed,
Whose lines are treasured like the lewd,
His first editions prizes reckoned
Because there never was a second.
Obscurely famous in his rut,
Unknown, unpopular, "uncut,"
Where Byron thrilled a continent,
To thrill an auction-room content,
He struggles through oblivion's bogs,
To gain a place in-catalogues!
And falls asleep and joins the dust
In simple hope and modest trust
That, though Posterity neglect
His bones, his books it will collect,
And these will grow-O prospect fair!-
From year to year more "scarce" and "rare."
[Sidenote: An Attack of Alliteration]
Have you noticed the Renaissance of alliteration in the new journalism? The early English Poets made alliteration the chief element of their poetry, and in modern times Swinburne has paid more attention to it (and to rhyme) than to meaning, with the result that there has arisen a school of poets who don't mean anything-and say it. In the olden days, a bride was bonny, and was requested to busk herself in consequence; all of which was intelligible. Nowadays, the poet would call a basilisk bonny rather than miss his alliteration. Is it because the new journalism is so imaginative and emotional that it throws off alliterative phrases as naturally and unconsciously as Whittier confesses he did in writing "The Wreck of Rivermouth"? It is sometimes difficult to believe that providence is not on the side of the evening bills. When Balmaceda died he committed Suicide by Shooting himself in Santiago-of all places in the world. Boulanger, if from a local point of view he died less satisfactorily, was yet careful to employ a Bullet. It is for the sake of the phrase-makers that Burglars good-naturedly prefer Bermondsey, and that Tigers do not escape from their cages to play in Tragedies till the show arrives at Tewkesbury. The Baboon is already so largely alliterative in himself that it was an excess of generosity that made one recently attack an infant under such circumstances as to allow the report to be headed, "Baby Bitten by a Baboon in a Backyard at Bow." Alliteration has become a mighty factor in politics: it is fast replacing epigram, while its effects on moral character are tremendous. That "hardened criminal," Mr. Balfour, might have been a good man instead of a "base brutal bully," if his name had only commenced with an X. He is a noteworthy martyr to the mania of the times. I am convinced that the Death of the Duke of Devonshire was accelerated by anxiety to please the sub-editors, and it is a source of real regret to me to reflect that my own death can afford them no supplementary gratification of this nature.
[Sidenote: The Humorous]
To start anything exclusively funny is a serious mistake. This was why poor Henry J. Byron's "Mirth" was so short-lived. It died of laughing. A friend of mine, with a hopeless passion for psychological analysis, says that the reason people do not laugh over comic papers is that the element of the unexpected is wanting. This, he claims, is the essence of the comic. You laugh over a humorous remark in the middle of a serious essay, over a witty epigram flashed upon a grave conversation, over the slipping into the gutter of a ponderous gentleman-it is the shock of contrast, the flash of surprise, that tickles. Now this explanation of why people do not laugh over comic papers is obviously wrong, because you are surprised when you see a joke in a comic paper; at the same time, it contains an element of truth. The books which gain a reputation for brilliance are those which are witty at wide intervals; the writer who scintillates steadily stands in his own light.
[Sidenote: The Discount Farce]
Having started your magazine, you will begin humorously enough by affixing a mock price to it. What a strange world of make-believe it is! We are so habituated to shams that we cannot help shamming even where there is nothing to be gained by it. Why is music published at four shillings when you can buy it for one and four, or at most one and eight? Why are novels published at thirty-one and six and the magazines at a shilling? "Shilling shockers" are sold at ninepence, which is as comical as selling "tenpenny nails" at sixpence. The same principle rules in other trades. It almost seems as if there is an ineradicable instinct in humanity for getting things below their price, even if at more than their value. Hence the marked popularity of "sales" and "reductions." The idea of getting things cheap reconciles one to getting things one doesn't want. The craze for cheap things leads one into frightful extravagance. In some shops the weakness of humanity is pandered to without disguise, and every article is ticketed with a little card, from which the first price is carefully ruled out, and even on the second price you get a discount for cash. This same discount for cash is at least intelligible, but business men are painfully familiar with another wonderful deduction. After you wait months for your money, you get a cheque less "discount on payment." This seems to involve an exasperating Hibernicism. "On payment," forsooth! So long as it remains unpaid, the debt due to you is, say, one hundred pounds. But the moment you really get it, it shrinks to ninety-five. Why not call it ninety-five at the start and be done with it? But, no! men will not give up the subtle pleasure of discounts, ineffably childish though it be. The rather deaf lady who being asked six shillings a yard for stuff replied "Sixteen shillings a yard! I'll give you eleven," and who, when her mistake was pointed out, said "I couldn't think of paying more than four and sixpence" was a genuine type of the population of these islands.