somewhat profusely of several successful writers, and no doubt you are right.  But you must remember that it is a favourite charge against the gifted and the fortunate.  Because we have failed by fair means, we are sure the other fellows have succeeded by foul.  And, moreover, one is apt to forget how much talent is needed to be a charlatan.  Never look down upon a charlatan.  Courage, skill, personal force or charm, great knowledge of human nature, dramatic instinct, and industry—­few charlatans succeed (and no one is called a charlatan till he does succeed, be his success as low or high as you please) without possessing a majority of these qualities; how many of which—­it would be interesting to know—­do you possess?

Indeed, it would seem to need more gifts to be a rogue than an honest man, and there is a sense in which every great man may be described as a charlatan—­plus greatness; greatness being an almost indefinable quality, a quality, at any rate, on which there is a bewildering diversity of opinion.

You seem a little cross with publishers and editors.  They have not proved the distinguished, brilliant, and sympathetic beings you imagined them in your boyish dreams.  No doubt, publishers and editors enter hardly into the kingdom of heaven.  But then, you see, they don’t care so much about that; they are much more interested in the next election at certain fashionable clubs.  It is really a little hard on them that they should suffer from the ignorant misconception of the literary amateur.  It is only those who have had no dealings with them who would be unfair enough to expect publishers or editors to be literary men.  They are business men—­business men par excellence—­and a good thing, too, for their papers and their authors.  You lament their mercenary view of life; but, judging by your letter, even you are not disposed to regard money as the root of all evil.

You cannot understand why you have failed where others have succeeded.  You have far more Greek than Keats, more history than Scott, and you know nineteen languages—­ten of them to speak.  With so many accomplishments, it must indeed be hard to fail—­though you do not seem to have found it difficult.  You have travelled too—­have been twice round the world, and have a thorough knowledge of the worst hotels.  Certainly, it is singular.  Nevertheless, I must confess that the dullest men I have ever met have been professors of history; the worst poets have not only known Greek, but French as well; and, generally speaking the most tiresome of my acquaintances have more degrees than I have Latin to name them in.  Alas! it is not experience, or travel, or language, but the use we make of them, that makes literary success, which, one may add, is particularly dependent—­perhaps not unnaturally—­on the use we make of language.  A book may be a book, although there is neither Latin nor Greek, nor travel, nor experience—­in fact ‘nothing’ in it; and though, like myself, you may pay an Oxford professor a thousand a year to correct your proofs, you may still miss immortality.