At the outset of his career, the man of letters is confronted by the fact that he must live.  The obtaining of a livelihood is preliminary to everything else.  Poets and cobblers are placed on the same level so far.  If the writer can barter MSS. for sufficient coin, he may proceed to develop himself; if he cannot so barter it, there is a speedy end of himself, and of his development also.  Literature has become a profession; but it is in several respects different from the professions by which other human beings earn their bread.  The man of letters, unlike the clergyman, the physician, or the lawyer, has to undergo no special preliminary training for his work, and while engaged in it, unlike the professional persons named, he has no accredited status.  Of course, to earn any success, he must start with as much special knowledge, with as much dexterity in his craft, as your ordinary physician; but then he is not recognised till once he is successful.  When a man takes a physician’s degree, he has done something; when a man betakes himself to literary pursuits, he has done nothing—­till once he is lucky enough to make his mark.  There is no special preliminary training for men of letters, and as a consequence, their ranks are recruited from the vagrant talent of the world.  Men that break loose from the professions, who stray from the beaten tracks of life, take refuge in literature.  In it are to be found doctors, lawyers, clergymen, and the motley nation of Bohemians.  Any one possessed of a nimble brain, a quire of paper, a steel-pen and ink-bottle, can start business.  Any one who chooses may enter the lists, and no questions are asked concerning his antecedents.  The battle is won by sheer strength of brain.  From all this it comes that the man of letters has usually a history of his own:  his individuality is more pronounced than the individuality of other men; he has been knocked about by passion and circumstance.  All his life he has had a dislike for iron rules and common-place maxims.  There is something of the gipsy in his nature.  He is to some extent eccentric, and he indulges his eccentricity.  And the misfortunes of men of letters—­the vulgar and patent misfortunes, I mean—­arise mainly from the want of harmony between their impulsiveness and volatility, and the staid unmercurial world with which they are brought into conflict.  They are unconventional in a world of conventions; they are fanciful, and are constantly misunderstood in prosaic relations.  They are wise enough in their books, for there they are sovereigns, and can shape everything to their own likings; out of their books, they are not unfrequently extremely foolish, for they exist then in the territory of an alien power, and are constantly knocking their heads against existing orders of things.  Men of letters take prosaic men out of themselves; but they are weak where the prosaic men are strong.  They have their own way in the world of ideas, prosaic men in the world of facts.  From his practical errors the writer learns something, if not always humility and amendment.  A memorial flower grows on every spot where he has come to grief; and the chasm he cannot over-leap he bridges with a rainbow.