forbids them openly to say so. Plenty of clever people secretly regard the Muse as a distinguished old lady, of good family, who has been a beauty and a wit in her day, but who really rules by sufferance only in these years of her decline. They whisper that she is sinking into second childhood, repeats herself when she converses, and has exchanged her early liberal tastes for a love of what is puerile, ingenious, and finikin.

The intellectual condition of our times differs from that of all preceding ages in no other point so much as in its attitude toward the writings of the dead. To the class whom Pope addressed, Shakespeare and Milton were phantoms, Chaucer and Spenser not so much as names. The only doubt was whether Alexander Pope was man enough to arrest attention by the intrinsic merits of his poetry. If his verse was admitted to be good, his public were not distracted by a preference for other verse which they had known for a longer time. This remained true until about a generation ago.

The activity of the dead is now paramount, and threatens to paralyze original writing altogether. In this great throng of resuscitated souls, all of whom have forfeited their copyright, how is the modern poet to exist? He has no longer to compete · as "his great forefathers did, from Homer down to Ben" with the leading spirits of his own generation, but with the genius of the world. At every turn, the thronging company of the ghosts impedes and disheartens the modern writer; and it is no wonder if the new Orpheus throws down his lyre in despair when the road to his desire is held by such an invincible army of spectres.

On the whole, however, it is highly unlikely that the antiquarian passion of our age will last. There are already signs of its wearing out. As to the old poets, one by one they pass into text-books and are lost. Chaucer is done for, and so is Milton; Goldsmith is annotated, Scott prepared for "local examinations"; even Byron, the loose, the ungrammatical, is edited as a school-book. We shall see Wordsworth captured, Shelley boiled down for the use of babes, and Keats elaborately annotated, with his blunders in classical mythology exposed. The schoolmaster is the only friend the poet of the future dares to look to, for he alone has the power utterly to destroy the loveliness and mystery which are the charm of the old poets. But even a secondrate verse-writer may hope to live by the side of an Elizabethan poet edited for the Clarendon Press.

It is usually said, in hasty generalization, that the poetry of the present age is unique in the extreme refinement of its exterior mechanism. Those who

say this are not aware that the great poets whose virile simplicity and robust carelessness of detail they applaud have almost without exception been scrupulously attentive to form. No modern writer has been so learned in rhythm as Milton, so faultless in rhyme-arrangement as Spenser. But what is true is that a care for form and a considerable skill in the technical art of verse have been acquired by writers of a lower order, and that this sort of perfection is no longer the hall-mark of a great master. We may expect it, therefore, to attract less attention in the future, and although, assuredly, the bastard jargon of Walt Whitman, and kindred returns to sheer bar arism, will not be accepted, technical perfection will more and more be taken as a matter of course, as a portion of the poet's training which shall be as indispensable and as little worthy of notice as that a musician should read his notes correctly.-Edmund Gosse, in the January Forum.

"RETURNED, WITH THANKS."

One of the most pathetic things in the relation subsisting between editor and contributor is found in the brief, but expressive, legend — “Returned, with thanks." To the literary aspirant who is just beginning what he hopes will prove a remunerative, if not a famous, career it comes as a stunning shower-bath, dashing his pretty dream to the ground, and sometimes deterring him from further pursuit of it. He supposes the experience is peculiar to himself. If he possesses much conceit, he is likely to be affronted; but if he is both sensitive and modest, the blow either dazes or crushes him, at least temporarily.

That he who writes will be sensitive is not only certain; it is also a voucher, for one part at least, of the successful author's endowment. For the literary choir is not less irritable and discordant over things that yield dissatisfaction than is the musical one, concerning which this condition has been condensed into a proverb. As to modesty, few writers possess it in excess; or, if they do at the outset of their career, time and experience soon relieve them of so troublesome a trait.

But editors do not wish to be cruel or hardhearted, however much they may seem so to the unspurred and unfledged writer. The very best and most famous of them have often told me that one of the saddest and most thankless duties they have to perform is to return a contribution that for some good reason does not prove to be available.

When I once wrote some verses treating this necessity humorously, I had to apply to three editors in succession before I could get them printed, the first two assuring me sorrowfully that the matter was quite too serious to be treated with levity. And Mr. Curtis, in his delightful "Easy Chair," has given us over and over again his confirmation of this editorial sympathy. How often, and with what inimitable grace and tenderness has he written to some typical contributor of the limitations set upon a great periodical or magazine! What soothing emollients he has poured out on the disturbed writer's bruised heart!

It is not you, Ralph, or you, Rebecca, he has said in effect, that are necessarily at fault. Doubtless your piece is of the very best description, and we publish often, as you so feelingly allege, those no better, or not so good. But then, there are reasons and reasons, which you would soon see if you were the editor. The very first is the limitation of our space; another is the frequency with which we have already treated your topic or a line of topics into which it falls; another is its length; and so on to the end of a long list, not one of which rebuts the assumption that the unfortunate article is a capital one, and every way worthy of being embalmed in the choicest type.

It is a mistake, then, for the literary aspirant to imagine that his returned manuscript has committed any offence, or that his muse, if he has strided Pegasus, cannot soar. What he must do is to sail forth with it again and again, until it reaches a favored port, which it will surely do, if it has the requisite merit, somewhere and at some date. President Lincoln used to say, when he was trying faithfully and with great diligence to place the various able men who were presented to him for the civil service and for the army, that it was a very difficult matter to get the square pegs in the round holes, and the round pegs in the square ones. And it is just this difficulty which confronts the writer for periodicals and magazines. No matter how experienced he may be, he will often fail before he brings his commodity to the market which waits for it.

Does the literary aspirant suppose that the great names in authorship, whose fame is now secure, and whose emolument he would fain covet for his own wares, were not also baffled as he is by "Returned, with thanks"? If he does, he supposes wrongly. These are words that were as familiar to Thackeray and Carlyle as they are to you. Nothing in Thackeray's early period took the English press with more storm and triumph than

Carlyle had treatment of the same sort. Upon his articles, when used, even Jeffrey employed an editorial surgery of cutting out and writing in that would have irritated a much less sensitive writer than he was, "till Carlyle must have been more than mortal if he did not use stronger language than he put upon paper." When it was all done, Jeffrey concluded that “Carlyle would not do" for the Edinburgh Review. But as Jeffrey's "would not do" did not snuff out the muse of Wordsworth, to which it was likewise applied, so it did not seriously impede Carlyle's success.

Any number of writers besides these, both English and American, have seen their best work ornamented by "Returned, with thanks." The decision it implies, therefore, is not necessarily a critical one at all. It may be critical, but the chances are that it is not. Only the other day, in speaking of poetry, the editor of one of our most famous magazines said to me: "You would be surprised to see the kind of poems I reject, and the number of them." "Of course," said I, "every editor gets a mountain of chaff for one kernel of wheat." "No," said he, "I do not mean that; I refer to the multitude of excellent and appealing ones that I cannot possibly make room for."

A friend of mine, who writes well for various periodicals, keeps all the editorial refusals that have come to him in a special scrap-book. This may promote humility, or, if not that, good humor. It shows, at any rate, that the refusal is no cause for chagrin or discouragement. An English writer said, many years ago: "I have had manuscripts returned again and again, but they have always found a publisher in the end, and I have an impression, which is, I believe, shared by many public writers, that the best articles are those that are returned the oftenest. I know that they are sometimes the most successful, and, to compare small things with great, that, it is notorious, has been the case with two or three historical works and works of fiction, which, before they were published, were metaphorically scored all over by the publishers' readers with these words, " Returned, with thanks." -Joel Benton, in the Ladies' Home Journal for February.

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libraries whether complete sets of the two magazines are on file. Both magazines are educational in their character, and, being the only magazines in the world devoted solely to explaining the practical details of literary work, they should be found in every public library in the United States. The number of complete sets available is rapidly diminishing, and librarians will find it impossible to get complete files unless they order soon. Unbound sets can no longer be supplied.

"THE WRITER" FOR JANUARY.

THE WRITER for January contains: "Preparing Copy," by M. L. Allen; "A Professional Critic," by Matthew Marvin ; "George Edward Woodberry"; "The Variations of 'Said,' " by Arthur C. Grissom; Don't Be a Coward," by W. S. Harwood; "A Word about Quotations," by J. Henry Hager; "The Braddon-Maxwell Book-making Manufactory," by Henry Llewellyn Williams; editorials on "The Use of Typewriters by Authors," "Newspaper English," "Stories with Two Endings," "Rudyard Kipling's Latest Freak"; "Slipshod Writing," by M. Sheeleigh; and the usual departments entitled: "Queries," "The Use and Misuse of Words," "Book Reviews," "Helpful Hints and Suggestions," Literary Articles in Periodicals," and "News and Notes."

HOW OLIVER OPTIC WRITES A STORY.

Regarding this title as a sort of conundrum addressed to me, I am inclined to guess it by replying that if I have a story to write, I write it. I have no inflexible rules; I use no machinery but a typewriter; and have no patent apparatus of any kind for laying the foundation of the story. I may add that I do not begin to write, and continue to write till I have a required amount of matter, and then chop it off, as some have thought. On the contrary, there is method in the operation; there must be a plan, which must be worked out; and when it is worked out, the story is done, and it is time to stop. If one thinks he is to stop only when he has produced on paper so many thousand words, it will require an extra effort of the imagination to enable him to believe that he has written a story.

I am entirely willing to give the modus operandi of "How I Write My Stories," so far as there is any “modus" about it. I fancy that mine is substan

tially the same method that others use. The first,

and in my judgment the most important, matter is to secure a plot. This is not a question of merely literary skill, but of invention, though the skill is needed to adjust the means to the end, and in judging of the value of the material involved by the mental powers. Some people who cannot write well may make excellent plots. Yet the difficulty is oftener in the other direction; the composition is good, but the "nub" is wanting. As the ability to invent a machine is nature's gift, so the power to make a plot is born in the individual. Study and practice may enlarge and develop the gift, but cannot create it. Extensive travel and varied reading, a considerable knowledge of the world, and, especially, a thorough insight into human nature, enlarge and improve the inventive powers.

When I have to write a story I sit down and think. I may or may not have some idea as a basis of the plot. The publisher may have told me that he wanted a story on a certain subject, as the War of the Rebellion. Then the inventive power is so far circumscribed. But generally I am entirely free to follow the leadings of my own imagination. Sometimes the groundwork may be suggested by something I have seen or read, as the dozen books of the "Young America Abroad" series were suggested by a visit to the Massachusetts School-ship. The plot of my last serial story was dug out of nothing at all. It came to me in the form of an investment in diamonds. These gems, as being of great value in a small compass, suggested the method by which a faithless trustee was to rob the hero and his mother of their inheritance. In his turn he was to be robbed, and this event was to disclose the villainy of the trustee, and enable the honest, upright, and brilliant hero to recover his own and his mother's property. I got so far before a mark was made on paper. All the details of this plot are to be worked up, its difficulties and its probabilities considered and passed upon.

As soon as I have settled the incidents, or the principal ones, in my own mind, I take a bit of waste paper, and write out the names of the characters who are to figure in the story. I have a list of available names I have invented, though I sometimes use current names. When I am satisfied with this list, I take out my "Plot-book."

I have been writing stories for forty years, and have the plot-books I have used for nearly all of that time, including all my books. I transfer to this book the names of the characters. With each one of them I have associated the part he is to play in the story. This is all I have to guide me as I

proceed, for I write nothing but the name in the book. Sometimes, though rarely, I write out on another page of the book a skeleton of the antecedents of the character, with dates and ages, in order to avoid mistakes. Then I arrange the introduction of the characters, inventing the scene in which some of them are to be presented. I consider it necessary to begin with a stirring incident in order to catch the interest of the reader, and give him a "fellow-feeling" for the hero.

I have before me the plot-book and a schedule in which appears each chapter and the page on which it begins and ends. I know where I am all the time, and my difficulty is not to stuff out these chapters, but to condense within the space allowed to each. I work in the forenoon only, four or five hours, writing three chapters, making a total of 5,400 words. William T. Adams, in the Ladies' Home Journal.

beginning: "What stronger breastplate than a heart untainted?" J. J. W.

LOCUST VALLEY, N. Y.

LETTER FROM ANDREW LANG.

To the Editor of THE AUTHOR: Some one has sent me your paper with the enclosed paragraph: "With love scenes in gasps, and death-bed defiance of syntax" is the way Andrew Lang sums up in the Speaker a current form of poor novelwriting; and in praising "Two English Girls," a new story, he warns the author and our authors, too as follows: "We cannot laugh any more at the hurried sight-seeing of Americans on the Continent, or at young men who wear strange raiment and talk culture; we have laughed till we are tired."

I never wrote those remarks, and I never heard of a novel called "Two English Girls."

Dumas.- Dumas' latest idea of helping poor play-writers (poor in pocket, and not in brains) is a novel one. He has written with great care a stirring play, which no doubt many a Parisian manager would be glad to buy of him at a high price. But the play is anonymous; the eccentric author has had it copied out in a non-literary hand and signed with a false name. It is now in the hands of a leading manager incognito; if he accepts it, he will get the play and the advertisement for nothing. If rejected, the play goes on to Number Two and so on, let us hope not ad infinitum. Dumas' alleged object is to give young and untried playwriters a chance; to force the managers, in other words, to examine every manuscript placed in their hands, which it is safe to say nine-tenths of them do not do at present. Evidently Paris, unlike New York, has no "Dramatic Development Society" to give aspiring and unpracticed playwrights a fighting chance. The friends of the drama, and they are many, will await with interest the issue of Dumas' odd experiment. Now might be a good season to send some American plays abroad.

E. A. T.

Feuillet.-J. Henry Hager, translator of "Le Roman d'un Jeune Homme Pauvre," "La Morte" ("Aliette"), and "Honneur d'Artiste," writes to the New York Commercial Advertiser as follows:

SIR: Allow me to call your attention to the fact that M. Octave Feuillet, at the time of his death, was in his sixty-eighth, and not in his seventy

eighth, year, as stated your obituary notice of him. I make this statement on the authority of M. Feuillet himself. Having written a paragraph for the American papers calling attention to the veteran author's continued literary activity at his advanced age, and giving the year of his birth as 1812, according to the figures in "Men of the Time" and Vaperau's "Dictionnaire des Contemporains,” which I inclosed to M. Feuillet, he wrote me, under date of "27 Mars, 1888," as follows: —

“Quoi que je ne suis pas né en 1812, comme le dit le journal, mais en 1822, ce qui est déjà bien suffisant, ma santé est fort mauvaise."

Indeed, the closing years of the novelist's career were filled with both physical and mental suffering, being rendered unutterably sad by the death of his eldest son, whom he idolized. Prostrated by the blow, he at first announced that he would never publish again, and discontinued work upon a nearly completed romance, first entitled, "Une Artiste." He was subsequently induced to print a comedy, and in the spring of 1890 finished and issued his last work, "Honneur d'Artiste."

The various obituary notices neglected to mention M. Feuillet's long connection with the Revue des Deux Mondes, in which the majority of his romances were first published, as co-editor. With this veteran periodical, itself a record of the progress of French thought for half a century, M. Feuillet was identified.

Living in the delightful Quartier Monceau, when in Paris, with a charming country house not far away, the author of "The Romance of a Poor Young Man," by which he is probably best known to the English-reading public, was surrounded by all that could render old age tolerable. That his end was not peaceful and painless must be a cause of regret, not only to his immediate friends, but to those who had known him through his books.

J. HENRY HAGER. Rexford. Eben E. Rexford, the poet, whose residence at Shiocton, Wis., was burned a few weeks ago, lost by the fire not only his valuable library and his fine conservatory, but also a quantity of manuscripts and his scrap-books, containing copies of his published compositions which have been given to the world in various periodicals during the past fifteen years. From these scrapbooks he had begun the compilation of a volume of his poems which he had intended to bring out soon. It was to attempt the rescue of these treasures that he made the desperate rush into the burning building which resulted in his serious injury. People who have preserved copies of Mr. Rexford's