had reason to be satisfied. The very first essential for literary success
is to decide what success means. If a young girl pines after the success of
Marion Harland and Mrs. Southworth, let her seek it. It is possible that
she may obtain it, or surpass it; and though she might do better, she might
do far worse. It is, at any rate, a laudable aim to be popular: popularity
may be a very creditable thing, unless you pay too high a price for it. It
is a pleasant thing, and has many contingent advantages,--balanced by this
great danger, that one is apt to mistake it for real success.

"Learning hath made the most," said old Fuller, "by those books on which
the booksellers have lost." If this be true of learning, it is quite as
true of genius and originality. A book may be immediately popular and also
immortal, but the chances are the other way. It is more often the case that
a great writer gradually creates the taste by which he is enjoyed.
Wordsworth in England and Emerson in America were striking instances of
this; and authors of far less fame have yet the same choice which they had.
You can take the standard which the book market offers, and train yourself
for that. This will, in the present age, be sure to educate certain
qualities in you,--directness, vividness, animation, dash,--even if it
leaves other qualities untrained. Or you can make a standard of your own,
and aim at that, taking your chance of seeing the public agree with you.
Very likely you may fail; perhaps you may be wrong in your fancy, after
all, and the public may be right: if you fail, you may find it hard to
bear; but, on the other hand, you may have the inward "glory and joy" which
nothing but fidelity to an ideal standard can give. All this applies to all
forms of work, but it applies conspicuously to literature.

Instead, therefore, of offering to young writers the usual comforting
assurance, that, if they produce anything of real merit, it will be sure to
succeed, I should caution them first to make their own definition of