were cursorily; “with a view, you know, to the eye of the public, just at the present moment?” He declined to suggest any subject, and I was thrown back among the depths of my own feelings and convictions. Now, could we have blended our elements together, and discussed all this in really amicable council, each would have corrected what there might have been of rawness in the other, and in the freedom of conversation our wits would have grown from the warmth of mutual encouragement. Such, at least, was my belief then. Since that I have learned to look at the business with eyes less enthusiastic. Let a man have learned the trick of the pen, let him not smoke too many cigars overnight, and let him get into his chair within half an hour after breakfast, and I can tell you almost to a line how much of a magazine article he will produce in three hours. It does not much matter what the matter be—only this, that if his task be that of reviewing, he may be expected to supply a double quantity. Three days, three out of the fourteen, passed by, and I could think of no fitting subject on which to begin the task I had appointed myself of teaching the British public. Politics at the moment were rather dull, and no very great question was agitating the minds of men. Lord Melbourne was Prime Minister, and had in the course of the Session been subjected to the usual party attacks. We intended to go a great deal further than Lord Melbourne in advocating Liberal measures, and were disposed to regard him and his colleagues as antiquated fogies in Statecraft; but, nevertheless, as against Sir Robert Peel, we should have given him the benefit of our defence. I did not, however, feel any special call to write up Lord Melbourne. Lord John was just then our pet minister; but even on his behalf I did not find myself capable of filling twenty-one closely-printed pages with matter which should really stir the public mind. In a first number, to stir the public mind is everything. I didn’t think that my colleagues sufficiently realised that fact—though I had indeed endeavoured to explain it to them. In the second, third, or fourth publication you may descend gradually to an ordinary level; you may become—not exactly dull, for dullness in a magazine should be avoided—but what I may perhaps call “
adagio” as compared with the “
con forza” movement with which the publication certainly should be opened. No reader expects to be supplied from month to month with the cayenne pepper and shallot style of literature; but in the preparation of a new literary banquet, the first dish cannot be too highly spiced. I knew all that—and then turned it over in my mind whether I could not do something about the ballot.
It had never occurred to me before that there could be any difficulty in finding a subject. I had to reject the ballot because at that period of my life I had, in fact, hardly studied the subject. I was Liberal, and indeed Radical, in all my political ideas. I was ready to “go in” for anything that was undoubtedly Liberal and Radical. In a general way I was as firm in my politics as any member of the House of Commons, and had thought as much on public subjects as some of them. I was an eager supporter of the ballot. But when I took the pen in my hand there came upon me a feeling that—that—that I didn’t exactly know how to say anything about it that other people would care to read. The twenty-one pages loomed before me as a wilderness, which, with such a staff, I could never traverse. It had not occurred to me before that it would be so difficult for a man to evoke from his mind ideas on a subject with which he supposed himself to be familiar. And, such thoughts as I had, I could clothe in no fitting words. On the fifth morning, driven to despair, I did write a page or two upon the ballot; and then—sinking back in my chair, I began to ask myself a question, as to which doubt was terrible to me. Was this the kind of work to which my gifts were applicable? The pages which I had already written were manifestly not adapted to stir the public mind. The sixth and seventh days I passed altogether within my room, never once leaving the house. I drank green tea. I eat meat very slightly cooked. I debarred myself from food for several hours, so that the flesh might be kept well under. I sat up one night, nearly till daybreak, with a wet towel round my head. On the next I got up, and lit my own fire at four o’clock. Thinking that I might be stretching the cord too tight, I took to reading a novel, but could not remember the words as I read them, so painfully anxious was I to produce the work I had undertaken to perform. On the morning of the eighth day I was still without a subject.
I felt like the man who undertook to play the violin at a dance for five shillings and a dinner—the dinner to be paid in advance; but who, when making his bargain, had forgotten that he had never learned a note of music! I had undertaken even to lead the band, and, as it seemed, could not evoke a sound. A horrid idea came upon me that I was struck, as it were, with a sudden idiotcy. My mind had absolutely fled from me. I sat in my armchair, looking at the wall, counting the pattern on the paper, and hardly making any real effort to think. All the world seemed at once to have become a blank to me. I went on muttering to myself,
