And then there is a quaint story from Arabye of some serpentis called sirens, and other delectable matter; but alas!--our learned friend must return to the shades. So we will bid him Godspeed!--and, as one naturally falls into Elia’s manner in praising an old author, I will say: ‘Blessings on thee! Master Laurens Andrewe. I believe thou knowest no more of fishes than I do, but what do we care for piscatory lore. Thou hast devised most entertaining matter, and written a worthy book. So may the earth press lightly on thy old bones!’
If you who read this have one or two favourite authors among the living, take care that you do not meet them; above all, do not seek them out. If you think Mr. Horace Tendency’s _Bones and Bottles_ the greatest novel of the age, if you have concluded that Mr. Gadfly, essayist and critic, has more wit and wisdom than any man now living, write and tell them so if you like, but do not go any further. Be satisfied with exchanging a letter of admiration for a badly executed autograph, or you will court disaster. If you should want more, remember that we have a literary press that makes a business of publishing photographs or paragraphs or both. Do not imagine that you have heard the last of your favourites; I know for a fact that Mr. Tendency has a novel in the press that is even greater than _Bones and Bottles_, and I have heard that Mr. Gadfly has just signed an agreement to combine wit and wisdom in a perfectly astonishing manner.
There are several gentlemen now earning a fair living by feeding public curiosity and battening on the fame of its darlings. They do it by seeking out a celebrity and retailing his unconsidered trifles of talk at a good market price. When they do it maliciously, as some do by making merry with the great man’s moustache or sneering at his wife, they are really doing the literary public a service, for they act as a warning and, indeed, point a moral. They and their works say to the enthusiast: If you would be happy, avoid the company of your favourite authors or you will be speedily disillusioned, and either preserve a cynical silence for the rest of your time or make capital out of your misery by falling into our unsavoury practices. It is possible, of course, to meet a few authors without wishing to do so. A good many of them go out a great deal nowadays, and some move in very decent society, so that there is no knowing when and where one may meet an author or two. At any moment, one or other of us may be faced with what appears to be a pair of overfed, pompous merchants or manufacturers, only to learn, on being introduced, that while one of them, Mr. Dash of Dot & Dash, Leadenhall Street, is the real thing, his companion is no other than Mr. Blank, the mystical poet. But to encounter authors in this way is no great matter; there is no need to reveal the fact that one knows anything about them. If they happen to be men whose work is good, some disappointment may attend the encounter, but it will only be slight, for we can afford to be amused when the meeting is accidental and we have not deliberately asked to be disillusioned. But if we are decoyed by a naive enthusiasm into seeking out our men, it is almost certain that we shall be grievously disappointed, and it is more than likely that our admiration for their work will soon be on the wane. Knowing the men, we may pretend to admire them more than ever; most of us do; but it hardly deceives anybody, and certainly not ourselves, who are left with the unpleasant thought that we have thus cut down our own pleasures.