much water does it draw? If it awaken you to think, if
it lift you from your feet with the great voice of
eloquence, then the effect is to be wide, slow, permanent,
over the minds of men; if the pages instruct you not,
they will die like flies in the hour. The way to speak
and write what shall not go out of fashion is to speak
and write sincerely. The argument which has not power
to reach my own practice, I may well doubt will fail
to reach yours. But take Sidney's maxim:--"Look in thy
heart, and write." He that writes to himself writes to
an eternal public. That statement only is fit to be made
public which you have come at in attempting to satisfy
your own curiosity. The writer who takes his subject from
his ear and not from his heart, should know that he has
lost as much as he seems to have gained, and when the
empty book has gathered all its praise, and half the
people say, 'What poetry! what genius!' it still needs
fuel to make fire. That only profits which is profitable.
Life alone can impart life; and though we should burst we
can only be valued as we make ourselves valuable. There
is no luck in literary reputation. They who make up the
final verdict upon every book are not the partial and
noisy readers of the hour when it appears, but a court as
of angels, a public not to be bribed, not to be entreated
and not to be overawed, decides upon every man's title to
fame. Only those books come down which deserve to last.
Gilt edges, vellum and morocco, and presentation-copies
to all the libraries will not preserve a book in circulation
beyond its intrinsic date. It must go with all Walpole's
Noble and Royal Authors to its fate. Blackmore, Kotzebue,