Be vague, colourless, and languid, this deters readers from approaching the book.  If you have glanced at it, blame it for not being what it never professed to be; if it is a treatise on Greek Prosody, censure the lack of humour; if it is a volume of gay verses, lament the author’s indifference to the sorrows of the poor or the wrongs of the Armenians.  If it has humour, deplore its lack of thoughtfulness; if it is grave, carp at its lack of gaiety.  I have known a reviewer of half a dozen novels denounce half a dozen kinds of novels in the course of his two columns; the romance of adventure, the domestic tale, the psychological analysis, the theological story, the detective’s story, the story of “Society,” he blamed them all in general, and the books before him in particular, also the historical novel.  This can easily be done, by dint of practice, after dipping into three or four pages of your author.  Many reviewers have special aversions, authors they detest.  Whatever they are criticising, novels, poems, plays, they begin by an attack on their pet aversion, who has nothing to do with the matter in hand.  They cannot praise A, B, C, and D, without first assailing E. It will generally be found that E is a popular author.  But the great virtue of a reviewer, who would be unreadable and make others unread, is a languid ignorant lack of interest in all things, a habit of regarding his work as a tedious task, to be scamped as rapidly and stupidly as possible.

You might think that these qualities would displease the reviewer’s editor.  Not at all, look at any column of short notices, and you will occasionally find that the critic has anticipated my advice.  There is no topic in which the men who write about it are so little interested as contemporary literature.  Perhaps this is no matter to marvel at.  By the way, a capital plan is not to write your review till the book has been out for two years.  This is the favourite dodge of the —–­, that distinguished journal.

If any one has kindly attended to this discourse, without desiring to be a failure, he has only to turn the advice outside in.  He has only to be studious of the very best literature, observant, careful, original, he has only to be himself and not an imitator, to aim at excellence, and not be content with falling a little lower than mediocrity.  He needs but bestow the same attention on this art as others give to the other arts and other professions.  With these efforts, and with a native and natural gift, which can never be taught, never communicated, and with his mind set not on his reward, but on excellence, on style, on matter, and even on the not wholly unimportant virtue of vivacity, a man will succeed, or will deserve success.  First, of course, he will have to “find” himself, as the French say, and if he does not find an ass, then, like Saul the son of Kish, he may discover a kingdom.  One success he can hardly miss, the happiness of living, not with trash, but