. . I'd ask, sometimes,
when I was very young, for my own works. 'What's the name? What?
Magnus?--No, don't stock him. No demand. We could get you a copy,
sir . . . ' There it is. Why not laugh at it? I was doing perhaps
the most useless thing in the world. A commonplace little water-
colour, hung on a wall, can give happiness to heaps of people; a
poor piece of music can do a thousand things, good and bad, but an
unsuccessful novel--twenty unsuccessful novels! A whole row, with
the same history awaiting their successors . . . 'We welcome a new
novel by Mr. William Magnus, who our readers will remember wrote
that clever story . . . The present work seems to us at least the
equal of any that have preceded it.' . . . A fortnight's
advertisement--Dead silence. Some one in the Club, 'I see you've
written another book, old man. You do turn 'em out.' A letter from a
Press Agency who has never heard of one's name before, 'A little
sheaf of thin miserable cuttings.' . . . The Sixpenny Lot . . . Ouf!
And still I go on and shall go on until I die. Perhaps after all I'm
more justified than any of them. I'm stripped of all reasons save
the pleasure, the thrill, the torment, the hopes, the despairs of
the work itself.
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