A careful study of the records of literary men in the past, and a considerable knowledge of living authors, suggests two chief ways of losing one’s digestion and engendering literary capacity.  You go and live in humble lodgings,—­we could name dozens of prominent men who have fed a great ambition in this way,—­or you marry a nice girl who does not understand housekeeping.  The former is the more efficacious method, because, as a rule, the nice girl wants to come and sit on your knee all day, and that is a great impediment to literary composition.  Belonging to a club—­even a literary club—­where you can dine is absolute ruin to the literary beginner.  Many a bright young fellow, who has pushed his way, or has been pushed by indiscreet friends, into the society of successful literary men, has been spoilt by this fatal error, and he has saved his stomach to lose his reputation.

Having got rid of your digestion, then, the common condition of all good literature, the next thing is to arrange your dietary for the particular literary effect you desire.  And here we may point out the secrecy observed in such matters by literary men.  Stevenson fled to Samoa to hide his extremely elaborate methods, and to keep his kitchen servants out of the reach of bribery.  Even Sir Walter Besant, though he is fairly communicative to the young aspirant, has dropped no hints of the plain, pure, and wholesome menu he follows.  Sala professed to eat everything, but that was probably his badinage.  Possibly he had one staple, and took the rest as condiment.  Then what did Shakespeare live on?  Bacon?  And Mr. Barrie, though he has written a delightful book about his pipe and tobacco, full of suggestion to the young humorist, lets out nothing or next to nothing of his meat and drink.  His hints about pipes are very extensively followed, and nowadays every ambitious young pressman smokes in public at least one well-burnt briar with an eccentric stem—­even at some personal inconvenience.  But this jealous reticence on the part of successful men—­you notice they never let even the interviewer see their kitchens or the debris of a meal—­necessarily throws one back upon rumour and hypothesis in this matter.  Mr. Andrew Lang, for instance, is popularly associated with salmon, but that is probably a wilful delusion.  Excessive salmon, far from engendering geniality, will be found in practice a vague and melancholy diet, tending more towards the magnificent despondency of Mr. Hall Caine.

Nor does Mr. Haggard feed entirely on raw meat.  Indeed, for lurid and somewhat pessimistic narrative, there is nothing like the ordinary currant bun, eaten new and in quantity.  A light humorous style is best attained by soda-water and dry biscuits, following cafe-noir.  The soda-water may be either Scotch or Irish as the taste inclines.  For a florid, tawdry style the beginner must take nothing but boiled water, stewed vegetables, and an interest in the movements against vivisection, opium, alcohol, tobacco, sarcophagy, and the male sex.