`I am a barren rascal,' he
writes, quoting Johnson on Fielding. Like other men, Murray felt
extreme difficulty in writing articles or tales which have an
infinitesimal chance of being accepted. It needs a stout heart to
face this almost fixed certainty of rejection: a man is weakened by
his apprehensions of a lithographed form, and of his old manuscript
coming home to roost, like the Graces of Theocritus, to pine in the
dusty chest where is their chill abode. If the Alexandrian poets
knew this ill-fortune, so do all beginners in letters. There is
nothing for it but `putting a stout heart to a stey brae,' as the
Scotch proverb says. Editors want good work, and on finding a new
man who is good, they greatly rejoice. But it is so difficult to do
vigorous and spontaneous work, as it were, in the dark. Murray had
not, it is probable, the qualities of the novelist, the narrator.
An excellent critic he might have been if he had `descended to
criticism,' but he had, at this time, no introductions, and probably
did not address reviews at random to editors. As to poetry, these
much-vexed men receive such enormous quantities of poetry that they
usually reject it at a venture, and obtain the small necessary
supplies from agreeable young ladies.
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