and the baggy trousers; and over the whole realm of song arose the Oriental dynasty under the prime viziership of Byron. Ten thousand puny rhymsters called the moon "Phingari," daggers "Ataghans," drummers "Tambourgis," and women "Houris"; became lovers of gin and haters of pork; discarded their neck-cloths, and put on sack-cloth; strove perseveringly in turn-down collars to look Conrad-like and misanthropic; swore by the beard of the Prophet, and raved in Spenserian stanzas about their "burning brows," or mourned over their “dark imaginings"; dreamed by night of gazelleeyed beauties, by day of Giaours, Jereed-men, and Janizaries; and, whether baker's, butcher's, or barber's apprentices, became the oracles of impassioned wretchedness, and when they could raise money enough — adventured, in hacks hired by the hour, imitations of Mazeppa at a hand-gallop along the highway. Where are they all now? Alas! the whole swarm of romances in six cantos with historical notes, alike with the ten thousand echoes of Byron, have long since gone to the land of forgetfulness; or, if they live in an accommodated sense of the term, owe it to the tender mercies of the pastrycook and the trunkmaker.

What can be more absurd than for a man to hope to rank as a thundering Jupiter, when he borrows all his thunder? How can you expect the world to honor you, when you despise yourself? The great I is the first element of an Idol. Be true to yourself, if you would have the world true to you. Your own gift you can exhibit every moment with the cumulative force of a whole life's cultivation, but of the borrowed talent of another you have only a temporary half-possession. Do not be frightened because your idiosyncrasies stick out, and provoke criticism; it is only by these that you can be identified. If you are knock-kneed and hump-backed; if you are squint-eyed, and look two ways at once, so much the better; you can't be confounded with the commonplace, stereotyped, bipeds who make up that “numerous piece of monstrosity," the public. If your hair is red, let it be red; to be called red-headed

Smith or Brown will distinguish you from other Smiths or Browns.

If a writer is conscious of inward emptiness, let him be dumb, remembering that “ ex nihilo nihil fit"; but if he has any native pith and substance, -any of the genuine stuff of thought, within him, he can hardly be too fearless in thrusting himself before the public. It is not your herd of imitators, the servile pecus, who are always looking abroad for models, who are forever trying to catch the tone, air, gait, or periwig of this or that great original, — that gain celebrity as authors. A man's nature can only squeak out, when subjected to such discipline. "Shakespeare," says Emerson, "never will be made by the study of Shakespeare. The Scipionism of Scipio is precisely that part he could not borrow." Let the young author be what Andrew Jackson Allen, the eccentric New York costumer, used to proclaim himself in his advertisements, "himself alone"; let him grapple firmly and fearlessly with his own ideas, and wreak his own thoughts upon expression in his own way, if he would win the praise of immortality. "To know his own aims," as Goethe recommends, "in the first place, and then manfully to follow them, looking neither to the right nor left, forward or backward," is the great secret of authorship.

Such a writer legislates from the independent throne of a separate existence, and his are the words to command the respect due to oracular authority, and to win the meed due to undisputed fame. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu said that in all her extended travels she had found but two classes of human beings, men and women; but strong as may be the generic resemblance between different minds, the fact is nevertheless obvious, that no man lives who has not his mental peculiarities and idiosyncrasies, who differs not in many respects, in soul as in body, from every other man; and if a writer fails to excite a sympathetic thrill in the public mind, it is because he lacks self-reliance, because, parrot-like, he repeats the sayings of others, instead of giving us the coinage of his own brain, because, in short, he does not stamp his writings with his own individuality.

CHAPTER VIII.

ATTENTION TO DETAILS.

My man who is to succeed must not only be industrious, but, to use an expression of a learned friend of mine, he must have "an almost ignominious love of details." ARTHUR HELPS.

66 It

On the first publication of his (Wellington's) "Despatches," one of his friends said to him, on reading the records of his Indian campaigns : seems to me, Duke, that your chief business in India was to procure rice and bullocks. "And so it was," replied Wellington, "for if I had rice and bullocks, I had men; and if I had men, I knew I could beat the enemy." CHARACTER, BY SAMUEL SMILES.

A

NOTHER indispensable element of success is attention to details. Some years ago an Eastern merchant, who had amassed a large fortune, was asked to what he attributed his success. Was it to mere chance? No; for other men had even better luck, yet did not get rich. Was it to industry? Not wholly; for many persons as indefatigable as himself had remained poor. Was it to energy? Only in part; for he had observed that even the most energetic men sometimes failed. But, if there was any one thing to which, more than to others, he could attribute his wealth, it was that he had made it a point never to neglect the details of his business. Many business men, he added, content themselves with planning; regarding comprehensive views as incompatible with scrupulous attention to small matters, they leave the execution of their schemes to subordinates; and the result is that, in the majority of cases, their plans fall through in consequence of the neglect of some clerk or other employee, and they remain forever at the foot of the ladder.

Does not every day's experience prove the sagacity of these observations? In the case of gifted men, especially, what

cause of failure do we find more fruitful or frequent than that here indicated, the contempt of details? Their souls fire with lofty conceptions of some work to be achieved; their minds warm with enthusiasm as they contemplate the object. already attained; but, when they begin to put the scheme into execution, they turn away in disgust from the dry minutiæ and vulgar drudgery which are required for its perfection. Hence the world is full of mute, inglorious Miltons, who languish, not from lack of talents, but because, in spite of their many brilliant. parts, they lack something which the famous possess. Some little defect mars all their excellences, and they hang fire. They are like Swift's dancing-master, who had every qualification except that he was lame. The watch is nearly complete; it only lacks hands. The cannon is perfect, except it has no touch-hole. The mouse-trap is just the thing, but they have forgotten the cheese. Such men bewail their fate, and so would addled eggs, if they could speak, which are so like the rest, but so dishonorably inferior. Failing to do the small tasks of life well, they have no calls to higher ones, and so they complain of neglect; as if the skipper of a schooner, on which every rope was sagging, and every sail rotting, through his negligence, should complain of the injustice done him in not making him commander of a seventyfour! The truth is, to be successful in any profession, one must have what has been called "an almost ignominious love of details." It is an element of effectiveness with which no reach of plan, no loftiness of design, no enthusiasm of purpose, can dispense. It is this which makes the difference between the practical man, who pushes his thought to a useful result, and the mere dreamer; between the Stephenson, who created a working locomotive-engine, and his predecessors, who conceived the idea of it, but could not put their thought into execution. In literature it is the conscientious and laborious attention to details nicety in the selection and arrangement of words, even particles that distinguishes a masterpiece of composition from a merely clever performance. So, too, in

art. Whoever has looked over the collections of drawings of the old masters must have been most deeply impressed by the slow growth of their works, owing to their conscientious nicety about little things. In nothing do they differ more from common painters than in their almost endless dwelling upon some small detail, a foot, or a hand, or a face, fashioning and refashioning it, but never once losing sight of the original idea. It has often been said that, if a man conceives the idea of becoming eminent in learning, and cannot toil through the million little drudgeries necessary to carry him on, his learning will soon be told. Or, if he undertakes to become rich, but despises the small and gradual advances by which wealth is ordinarily accumulated, his expectations will, of course, be the sum of his riches. Let a lawyer neglect the apparently petty circumstances of his case, and he will be almost sure to lose it; for some vital fact, perhaps the keystone of the whole, will be likely to escape his attention. Let the conveyancer omit the details of a deed, the little words that seem like surplusage, and he will continually involve his clients in litigation, and often subject them to the loss of their property. The difference between first and second class work in every department of labor lies chiefly in the degrees of care with which the minutiæ are executed.

All successful men have been remarkable, not only for general scope and vigor, but for their minute attention to details. Like the elephant, they can move colossal masses or pick up a pin. When Daniel Cady, the celebrated New York lawyer, had a case to argue, his labor on the details was enormous. He took it to his bed and board; had inspirations concerning it in his sleep; repeatedly arose at night to secure these by memoranda; and never ceased to mine and chamber in a great case, till it was actually called on the calendar. Then were to be seen the equipment and power of a great lawyer. When Brunelleschi elaborated the design of that cathedral in Florence which is one of the wonders of Italy, he did not content himself with leaving the execution of it to others, but per