nd who clearly saw the authoress behind her mask, and feared lest
she should be too confidently trusting to the powers of her pen to
support an establishment.

'If the public were a perfect instrument to strike on, I should be
tempted to take the wonderful success of my PRINCESS at her first
appearance for a proof of natural aptitude in composition, and might
think myself the genius. I know it to be as little a Stradivarius as
I am a Paganini. It is an eccentric machine, in tune with me for the
moment, because I happen to have hit it in the ringing spot. The book is
a new face appealing to a mirror of the common surface emotions; and the
kitchen rather than the dairy offers an analogy for the real value of
that "top-skim." I have not seen what I consider good in the book once
mentioned among the laudatory notices--except by your dear hand,
my Emmy. Be sure I will stand on guard against the "vaporous
generalizations," and other "tricks" you fear. Now that you are studying
Latin for an occupation--how good and wise it was of Mr. Redworth to
propose it!--I look upon you with awe as a classic authority and critic.
I wish I had leisure to study with you. What I do is nothing like so
solid and durable.

'THE PRINCESS EGERIA' originally (I must have written word of it to
you--I remember the evening off Palermo!) was conceived as a sketch; by
gradations she grew into a sort of semi-Scudery romance, and swelled to
her present portliness. That was done by a great deal of piecing, not to
say puffing, of her frame. She would be healthier and have a chance of
living longer if she were reduced by a reversal of the processes. But
how would the judicious clippings and prickings affect our "pensive
public"? Now that I have furnished a house and have a fixed address,
under the paws of creditors, I feel I am in the wizard-circle of my
popularity and subscribe to its laws or waken to incubus and the desert.
Have I been rash? You do not pronounce. If I have bound myself to pipe
as others please, it need not be entirely; and I can promise you it
shall not be; but still I am sensible when I lift my "little quill"
of having forced the note of a woodland wren into the popular
nightingale's--which may end in the daw's, from straining; or worse, a
toy-whistle.

'That is, in the field of literature. Otherwise, within me deep, I am
not aware of any transmutation of the celestial into coined gold.
I sound myself, and ring clear. Incessant writing