ABSTRACT
Besides, in the present and still increasing multitudinousness of books and authors, the chance of having readers among posterity is, even for the best, a very sorry hope. Still, we would adhere to our wish; and that very multitudinousness of books and authors may bring us right again one day. There are two literary devices or fashions to which at present one may trace much of the particular evil now under view. The one is the fashion or device of the three-volume novel; the other the fashion of publishing novels in serial numbers. The first, which we are happy to see is losing ground, is a wretched piece of publisher’s despotism in literature, redeemed from absolute vileness only by that mystical artistic value which there is, and always will be, in the number three. The other, which is still gaining ground, operates deleter iously, by compelling an author to supply the parts of his story before he has thoroughly conceived the whole, and also by compelling him to spice each separate part, so that it may please alone. These conditions exist, and it is not given to any man, in any time, to be independent of conditions that will thwart him, and compel him to deviate from his ideal of excellence. Still, if such writers as Dickens, Thackeray, and Jerrold, who have already earned a reputation, who have as much talent as any of those past novelists of whom our literature is proud, and who may even venture now to lead the public against its own prejudices, were to set the example, by each doing his best, in the style each in his inner heart believes to be best, the good that would be effected might be very great.
