ong notion might
be published with great advantage, _first in Paris_--but that's another
matter to be talked over. And of course I have not yet settled, either,
whether any book about the travel, or this, should be the first. 'All
very well,' you say, 'if you had money enough.' Well, but if I can see
my way to what would be necessary without binding myself in any form to
anything; without paying interest, or giving any security but one of my
Eagle five thousand pounds; you would give up that objection. And I
stand committed to no bookseller, printer, money-lender, banker, or
patron whatever; and decidedly strengthen my position with my readers,
instead of weakening it, drop by drop, as I otherwise must. Is it not
so? and is not the way before me, plainly this? I infer that in reality
you do yourself think, that what I first thought of is _not_ the way? I
have told you my scheme very badly, as I said I would. I see its great
points, against many prepossessions the other way--as, leaving England,
home, friends, everything I am fond of--but it seems to me, at a
critical time, _the_ step to set me right. A blessing on Mr. Mariotti my
Italian master, and his pupil!--If you have any breath left, tell
Topping how you are."

I had certainly not much after reading this letter, written amid all the
distractions of his work, with both the _Carol_ and _Chuzzlewit_ in
hand; but such insufficient breath as was left to me I spent against the
project, and in favour of far more consideration than he had given to
it, before anything should be settled. "I expected you," he wrote next
day (the 2nd of November), "to be startled. If I was startled myself,
when I first got this project of foreign travel into my head, MONTHS
AGO, how much more must you be, on whom it comes fresh: numbering only
hours! Still, I am very resolute upon it--very. I am convinced that my
expenses abroad would not be more than half of my expenses here; the
influence of change and nature upon me, enormous. You know, as well as
I, that I think _Chuzzlewit_ in a hundred points immeasurably the best
of my stories. That I feel my power now, more than I ever did. That I
have a greater confidence in myself than I ever had. That I _know_, if I
have health, I could sustain my place in the minds of thinking men,
though fifty writers started up to-morrow. But how many readers do _not_
think! How many take it upon trust from knaves and idiots, that one
writes too fast, or runs a