A Biographical Note
ON
GEORGE E. LOYAU.
By ATHA.
LORD BACON has left it on record, that the most humble author takes precedence of all crafts, callings, or professions, be they civil, military, or tribunal. It is by our writings that foreigners have been taught most to esteem us, and this fact is the more noticeable in the expression of Gemelli, the great Italian traveller, who told all Europe in the year 1700, that he could find nothing amongst the Anglo-Saxons, but their writings, to distinguish them from the worst of barbarians. To be an author is to be allied with poverty, and to form one of a grotesque race of famished buffoons, whose calamities cannot, or will not, be understood in these commercial times of money-getting. Australian authors especially, or the best of them—are either unknown or neglected. One or two there are who have made money, but these loved not their art, and only wore the literary mask, for the advancement of literature was not the first object of their designs. Dr. Johnson had a notion that there existed no motive for writing but money, and though crowned heads have sighed with the ambition of authorship, this great master of the human mind supposed that on this subject men were not actuated either by love or glory. These are commercial times at the antipodes, and the hope of profit has always a stimulating influence even if it is a trifle degrading. Habit and prejudice will reconcile even genius to the task of money-making. And why not? In a country composed for the most part of seekers after wealth, where there is no public provision for men of genius save the Destitute Retreat, an author need not be a more disinterested patriot than others. If his livelihood lies in his pen—why not use it? He is no
