After a month nearly vitrified by the heat of the weather and the ardour of politics, an inconsecutive writer naturally looks about for some questions that are not blazing. […] A cool unexciting topic, especially in August, seemed to be the future of the British Novel. Mr. Shand has been discoursing of this in the Fortnightly Review. One need not accept all his facts and all his conclusions: for example, there is not a definite, certain twopence of profit on a shilling novel. One shilling novel differs from another in magnitude. One may contain a hundred and seventy widely printed pages, another may hold two hundred and thirty pages of closely printed matter. It is evident that the expenses of the former will be much smaller, and the profits, supposing sales equal, proportionally greater.

Without accepting all Mr. Shand's views, then, it may be granted that ‘the novel business’ is not in the best possible condition. To the young gentleman or lady about to commence novelist one would whisper ‘Beware!’ and counsel some attention to statistics. In the first place, Sir or Madam, do you propose to use novel writing as a staff or a crutch? Can you live even if your books be a failure? According to the Old Man, even Nicholas, ‘literature is only respectable when combined with some other avocation, such as not being employed at the bar.’

A glance at the weekly advertising columns of the literary papers will show that perhaps one novel out of fifty is even moderately successful. In the last ten years any one of mature age can remember some five great ‘hits,’ and perhaps twenty stories which paid their authors about half or a quarter as well as they would have been paid for equivalent success at the Bar, in Medicine, in Business, and about an eighth as well as if the triumph had been won on the stage. Compare the pecuniary profits of Called Back, or John Inglesant, or even, in better days, of Romola, with those of Our Boys or The Private Secretary. Again, without going into figures too invidiously, contrast the probable income of the most successful living novelist with the income of a dull, plodding man who is in good practice at the Bar.