a sweetness which seem the result of a magical spell, an
incommunicable influence; they bring all heaven before the eyes;
they whisper the secrets of a region which is veritably there,
which we can discern and enjoy, but the charm of which we can
neither analyse nor explain; we can only confess its existence with
a grateful heart. One who devotes himself to writing should find,
then, his chief joy in the practice of his art, not in the rewards
of it; publication has its merits, because it entails upon one the
labour of perfecting the book as far as possible; if one wrote
without publication in view, one would be tempted to shirk the
final labour of the file; one would leave sentences incomplete,
paragraphs unfinished; and then, too, imperfect as reviews often
are, it is wholesome as well as interesting to see the impression
that one's work makes on others. If one's work is generally
contemned, it is bracing to know that one fails in one's appeal,
that one cannot amuse and interest readers. High literature has
often met at first with unmerited neglect and even obloquy; but to
incur neglect and obloquy is not in itself a proof that one's
standard is high and one's taste fastidious. Moreover, if one has
done one's best, and expressed sincerely what one feels and
believes, one sometimes has the true and rare pleasure of eliciting
a grateful letter from an unknown person, who has derived pleasure,
perhaps even encouragement, from a book. These are some of the
pleasant rewards of writing, and though one should not write with
one's eye on the rewards, yet they may be accepted with a sober
gratitude.

Of course there will come moods of discouragement to all authors,
when they will ask themselves, as even Tennyson confesses that he
was tempted to do, what, after all, it amounts to? The author must