We talk of bad and good.  Everything, indeed, is good which is conceived with honesty and executed with communicative ardour.  But though on neither side is dogmatism fitting, and though in every case the artist must decide for himself, and decide afresh and yet afresh for each succeeding work and new creation; yet one thing may be generally said, that we of the last quarter of the nineteenth century, breathing as we do the intellectual atmosphere of our age, are more apt to err upon the side of realism than to sin in quest of the ideal.  Upon that theory it may be well to watch and correct our own decisions, always holding back the hand from the least appearance of irrelevant dexterity, and resolutely fixed to begin no work that is not philosophical, passionate, dignified, happily mirthful, or, at the last and least, romantic in design.

MY FIRST BOOK:  ‘TREASURE ISLAND’ {17}

It was far indeed from being my first book, for I am not a novelist alone.  But I am well aware that my paymaster, the Great Public, regards what else I have written with indifference, if not aversion; if it call upon me at all, it calls on me in the familiar and indelible character; and when I am asked to talk of my first book, no question in the world but what is meant is my first novel.

Sooner or later, somehow, anyhow, I was bound to write a novel.  It seems vain to ask why.  Men are born with various manias:  from my earliest childhood, it was mine to make a plaything of imaginary series of events; and as soon as I was able to write, I became a good friend to the paper-makers.  Reams upon reams must have gone to the making of ‘Rathillet,’ ‘The Pentland Rising,’ {18} ’The King’s Pardon’ (otherwise ’Park Whitehead’), ‘Edward Daven,’ ’A Country Dance,’ and ‘A Vendetta in the West’; and it is consolatory to remember that these reams are now all ashes, and have been received again into the soil.  I have named but a few of my ill-fated efforts, only such indeed as came to a fair bulk ere they were desisted from; and even so they cover a long vista of years.  ‘Rathillet’ was attempted before fifteen, ‘The Vendetta’ at twenty-nine, and the succession of defeats lasted unbroken till I was thirty-one.  By that time, I had written little books and little essays and short stories; and had got patted on the back and paid for them—­though not enough to live upon.  I had quite a reputation, I was the successful man; I passed my days in toil, the futility of which would sometimes make my cheek to burn—­that I should spend a man’s energy upon this business, and yet could not earn a livelihood:  and still there shone ahead of me an unattained ideal:  although I had attempted the thing with vigour not less than ten or twelve times, I had not yet written a novel.  All—­all my pretty ones—­had gone for a little, and then stopped inexorably like a schoolboy’s watch.  I might be compared to a cricketer of many years’ standing who should never have made a run.  Anybody can write a short story—­a bad one, I mean—­who has industry and paper and time enough; but not every one may hope to write even a bad novel.  It is the length that kills.