HOW TO SUCCEED IN LITERATURE.

In those old-fashioned times, when people lived, so to speak, at haphazard, and when, if a man wished to gain a reputation for learning, he forgot himself and all he had and stuck to his books day and night—the ways of acquiring for one’s self an honoured and illustrious name were very different from what they are now. But in those days the business was a long one, and the path to be trodden was steep and rugged; and few were those who reached the top of the mountain, where Learning sheds abroad her gifts and graces. In our own day, however, we have shortened the journey, and opened a level and easy road, wherein you may walk, as it were, on cotton, with no other trouble than that of elbowing back those rival competitors who are pressing forward too boldly, or firing a snap-shot at those who are spreading their wings too rapidly. If any young man wishes to get on quickly, and to be greatly honoured, let him lay up a good store of mots and jests against his rivals, and have his head so full of them that they may fall from his tongue in showers like hailstones; and let him utter them on every possible occasion, whether in or out of season does not matter. Let him remember, moreover, that it is not enough to speak ill of others, but that he must also speak well of himself, and remember that Horace and Ovid, both of them, said that neither time, nor fire, nor any other calamity could 56destroy their works out of the world. If he cannot imitate those two writers in any other respect, let him do it in this. He should not spend much time and labour in composition, but dash off everything in hot haste; for the file and the foot-rule will spoil all the fire of his writing. Once upon a time the great art was to use art and yet conceal it; nowadays, in order to make no mistake in the using of it, it is considered the safest thing to have none at all. Those who are considered good authors he should leave alone, otherwise he may be accused of plagiarism; let him make capital of himself and his own brain, and fly wherever the latter is disposed to carry him. These are the general principles through following which I promise eternal fame to the young man in question. It is true that in this way a man does not leave a great literary reputation behind him after his death;—but what matters this last vanity, or the glory of an epitaph either?

Gasparo Gozzi.