lenient. I am glad you told me my faults plainly in private, for
in your public notice you touch on them so lightly, I should
perhaps have passed them over thus indicated, with too little
reflection.

"I mean to observe your warning about being careful how I
undertake new works; my stock of materials is not abundant, but
very slender; and, besides, neither my experience, my
acquirements, nor my powers, are sufficiently varied to justify
my ever becoming a frequent writer. I tell you this, because your
article in Frazer left in me an uneasy impression that you were
disposed to think better of the author of 'Jane Eyre' than that
individual deserved; and I would rather you had a correct than a
flattering opinion of me, even though I should never see you.

"If I ever DO write another book, I think I will have nothing of
what you call 'melodrama;' I think so, but I am not sure. I
THINK, too, I will endeavour to follow the counsel which shines
out of Miss Austen's 'mild eyes,' 'to finish more and be more
subdued;' but neither am I sure of that. When authors write best,
or, at least, when they write most fluently, an influence seems
to waken in them, which becomes their master--which will have its
own way--putting out of view all behests but its own, dictating
certain words, and insisting on their being used, whether
vehement or measured in their nature; new-moulding characters,
giving unthought of turns to incidents, rejecting
carefully-elaborated old ideas, and suddenly creating and
adopting new ones.

"Is it not so? And should we try to counteract this influence?