nature is both the work and the appeal of literature! Let the successful writer look back a few years, and what an utter sense of desolation there will be in the retrospect! Not a volume but has been the burial-place of many hopes, and the graven record of feelings never to be known again.
How constantly has mortification accompanied triumph! With what secret sorrow has that praise been received from strangers, denied to us by our friends! Nothing astonishes me more than the envy which attends literary fame, and the unkindly depreciation which waits upon the writer: of every species of fame, it is the most ideal and apart; it would seem to interfere with no one. It is bought by a life of labour; generally, also, of seclusion and privation. It asks its honour only from all that is most touching, and most elevated in humanity. What is the reward that it craves?—to lighten many a solitary hour, and to spiritualise a world, that were else too material. What is the requital that
