NIGEL BEALE NOTA BENE BOOKS

This could quite easily have been written by one of those Canadians who receives recognition at home once, and only once, they've received it from abroad:

Samuel Johnson's letter to Lord Chesterfield:

To The Right Honourable The Earl Of Chesterfield 7th February, 1755

My Lord,
I have been lately informed, by the proprietor of The World, that two papers, in which my Dictionary is recommended to the public, were written by your lordship. To be so distinguished is an honour which, being very little accustomed to favours from the great, I know not well how to receive, or in what terms to acknowledge.

When, upon some slight encouragement, I first visited your lordship, I was overpowered, like the rest of mankind, by the enchantment of your address, and could not forbear to wish that I might boast myself Le vainqueur du vainqueur de la terre;—that I might obtain that regard for which I saw the world contending; but I found my attendance so little encouraged, that neither pride nor modesty would suffer me to continue it. When I had once addressed your Lordship in public, I had exhausted all the art of pleasing which a retired and uncourtly scholar can possess. I had done all that I could; and no man is well pleased to have his all neglected, be it ever so little.

Seven years, my lord, have now passed, since I waited in your outward rooms, or was repulsed from your door; during which time I have been pushing on my work through difficulties, of which it is useless to complain, and have brought it, at last, to the verge of publication, without one act of assistance (1), one word of encouragement, or one smile of favour. Such treatment I did not expect, for I never had a patron before.

The shepherd in Virgil grew at last acquainted with Love, and found him a native of the rocks.

Is not a patrons my lord, one who looks with unconcern on a man struggling for life in the water, and, when he has reached ground, encumbers him with help? The notice which you have been pleased to take of my labours, had it been early, had been kind; but it has been delayed till I am indifferent, and cannot enjoy it: till I am solitary, and cannot impart it; (2) till I am known, and do not want it. I hope it is no very cynical asperity not to confess obligations where no benefit has been received, or to be unwilling that the public should consider me as owing that to a patron, which providence has enabled me to do for myself.

Having carried on my work thus far with so little obligation to any favourer of learning, I shall not be disappointed though I should conclude it, if less be possible, with less; for I have been long wakened from that dream of hope, in which I once boasted myself with so much exultation,

My Lord,
Your lordship's most humble,
most obedient servant,
SAM. JOHNSON.

Sanguine words from QD Leavis to those who have written an unpublishable novel: “A bad novel is ultimately seen to fail not because of its method but owing to a fatal inferiority of the author’s make-up;” and, from Henry James: “No good novel ever proceeded from a superficial mind.”

On a more helpful note: read the canon.

"Of what use, however, is a general certainty that an insect will not walk with his head hindmost, when what you need to know is the play of inward stimulus that sends him hither and thither in a network of possible paths?" George Eliot

John Keats in a letter to his publisher John Taylor, April 27, 1818 (The Letters of John Keats, ed. Maurice Buxton Forman O.U.P. 1948):

" I was purposing to travel over the north this Summer – there is but one thing to prevent me – I know nothing I have read nothing and I mean to follow Solomon’s directions of ‘ get Wisdom – get understanding’ – I find cavalier days are gone by. I find that I can have no enjoyment in the World but continual drinking of knowledge – I find there is no worthy pursuit but the idea of doing some good for the world – some do it with their society – some with their wit – some with their benevolence – some with a sort of power of conferring pleasure and good humour on all they meet and in a thousand ways all equally dutiful to the command of Great Nature – there is but one way for me- the road lies th[r]ough application study and thought. I will pursue it and to that end purpose retiring for some years. I have been hovering some time between an exquisite sense of the luxurious and a love for Philosophy – were I calculated for the former I should be glad – but as I am not I shall turn all my soul to the latter."

"This simple sense if wonder at the shapes of things, and at their exuberant independence of our intellectual standards and our trivial definitions, is the basis of spirituality as it is the basis of nonsense. Nonsense and faith (strange as the conjuction may seem) are the two supreme syblolic assertions of the turhtu that to draw out the souls of things with a syllogism is as impossible as to draw out Leviathan with a hook. The well-meaning person who, by merely studying the logical side of things, has decided "faith is nonsense," does not know how truly he speaks; later it may come back to him in the form that nonsense is faith."

G.K. Chesterton’s ‘A Defence of Nonsense’ in Essays of Today and Yesterday, from "The Defendant."

A writer is someone who can make a riddle out of an answer Kraus

Literature is the effort of man to indemnify himself for the wrongs of his condition Emerson

In a good play, everyone is in the right. Hebbel

He who has nothing to assert has no style and can have none. Shaw

To improve one’s style means to improve one’s thoughts and nothing else. Nietzsche

To write simply is as difficult as to be good. Maugham

Originality does not consist in saying what no one has ever said before but in saying exactly what you think yourself. Stephen

How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live. Thoreau

A little inaccuracy sometimes saves tons of explanation. Saki