The yellow book: an illustrated quarterly (6.1895)

The Auction Room of Letters

By Arthur Waugh

he present position of the literary man in England is very


much that of an auctioneer. He offers his goods for

sale ; other people, middlemen, come and bid for them, and the
prize goes to the highest bidder.” I have not the exact words by
me as I write ; nor, in a case of this sort, do exact words matter
very greatly. It is at least true that to this effect, and essentially
with this intention, a leading man of letters has within the last
month delivered himself upon the art which he espouses, that he
asks us to accept, as an illustration or parallelism, this comparison
of his calling with the huckstering of the auctioneer, and that such
a pronouncement appears, if one may conjecture assent from a har-
monious silence, to be received without disapproval by a large
number of his fellow-artists.
Now in the obiter d'uta of distinguished men there is often more
food for reflection than is evident at first sight, and this playful—
or was it perhaps a reproachful ?—metaphor of auctioneer and
public, carries a good deal more of import on its back than
“ many such like as’es of great charge,” which are bruited abroad
into fame from day to day. It contains in little the whole story
of the present position of authorship ; it reflects the past, it fore-
bodes the future, and it adorns its tale by pointing a strenuous

moral