Notes on printing for authors : literary etiquette / by Victor G. Plarr.

  • Plarr, Victor, 1863-1929.
Date:
1903
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Notes on printing for authors : literary etiquette / by Victor G. Plarr. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    hand, do not call names. The term “minor poet is offensive. We do not speak of “minor painters or “ minor actors, though there is as much medio- crity in the world of the brush and the buskin as in that of the lyre. The Bard should be protected by the memory of the greatest Englishman who ever lived—Shakespeare the poet. 13. A word on the subject of manners. Literary bigwigs are generally well treated in Society. To put it bluntly, they are usually prosperous, and as such they make their appeal to the vulgar in a fashion the vulgar understand. There is, however, a whole world of intellectuals whom it is customary to snub, partly through ignorance, partly through crass dislike of the things of the mind. Now there is such a thing as intellectual tact, and no nation can be called truly civilised that lacks or neglects it. It is an ugly sight, in a drawing-room full of pre- sumably “nice” and educated people, to see a fine and conscientious writer treated a little worse than a nonentity, his works unknown even do^vn to their titles. It is an ugly thing to note the total neglect in which a wit is often allowed to rust by his o'rti kinsfolk or fellow-townsmen. It is an ugly thing to mark the scant measure of courtesy often meted out, say, at a scientific congress, to some foreigner whose intellect is of world-Avide reputation. As a nation we have still to learn “ Who’s who ” in matters of the mind, and to carry our new knowledge into the affairs of official and social intercourse as punctili-