This dependence of literary fame upon special public favourites is, perhaps, most strikingly represented in the field of fiction and the drama. Nothing is more common than that a novelist or a dramatist should remain in the popular memory by virtue of a single production. Beckford is for most people only the author of 'Vathek'; it is only the bibliophile who troubles himself about 'Azemia' or 'The Elegant Enthusiast.' Miss Porter is remembered by her 'Scottish Chiefs'--scarcely at all, perhaps, by her 'Thaddeus of Warsaw.' Everybody knows how strongly 'The Monk' took the fancy of the reading world--so strongly that the writer was 'Monk' Lewis, and 'Monk' Lewis only, ever after. Mackenzie's 'Man of Feeling' survives, but the 'Man of the World' and 'Julia Roubigné' are as if they had never existed. And look at the playwrights! 'She Stoops to Conquer' is a classic, but 'The Good-Natured Man' is not even good-naturedly tolerated. 'The Road to Ruin' has eclipsed 'Duplicity' and 'The Deserted Daughter.' We all know 'The Honeymoon,' but who has seen, how many have read, 'The Curfew' and 'The School for Authors'? We flock to 'Wild Oats,' but alas for 'The Agreeable Surprise'! 'The Man of the World' keeps Macklin's name before us, but we have said good-bye to 'Love à la Mode.'
In truth, it is not a bad thing thus to be associated with one definite, unmistakable success. Gerard Hamilton did more for himself by that single brilliant speech than if he had delivered a whole multitude of less striking orations. There is nothing more fatal to a man than middlingness--a sort of dead level of mediocre performance. The world loses count of merely respectable outcome. To obtain its regard you must take its imagination captive at least once. You may be a very excellent person, and do very useful work; but, if you desire to be kept in mind, you must achieve something to which your name can be popularly attached. It is thus that Beattie and 'The Minstrel,' Green and 'The Spleen,' Somerville and 'The Chase,' Blair and 'The Grave,' Falconer and 'The Shipwreck,' Pollok and 'The Course of Time'--to name no others--are inseparably associated the one with the other. The works in question, probably, are rarely opened, but their titles at any rate have stuck in the general memory. Even in our own time, for the great majority of people, Miss Braddon will always be the author of 'Lady Audley's Secret,' Mrs. Oliphant always the author of 'The Chronicles of Carlingford,' Mrs. Henry Wood always the author of 'East Lynne'--and so on. That is the way in which they are remembered.