erate Toryism, or any how, I may--notwithstanding all present
obscurities that intervene--wake one of these fine mornings, and find
myself famous: and what then? The odds at Tattersall's would be twelve
to one that sundry busy-bodies, booksellers or otherwise, would scrape
together with malice prepense, and keep _cachet_ for future print, a
multitude of careless scrawls that should have been burnt within an hour
of the reading. Now, is not this a thing to be exclaimed against? And,
utterly improbable on the ground of any merit in themselves as I should
judge their publication (but for certain stolidities of the same sort,
that often-times have wearied me in print), I choose to let my author's
mind here enter its eternal protest against any such treachery regarding
private

LETTERS.

Tear, scatter, burn, destroy--but keep them not;
I hate, I dread those living witnesses
Of varying self, of good or ill forgot,
Of altered hopes, and withered kindnesses.
Oh! call not up those shadows of the dead,
Those visions of the past, that idly blot
The present with regret for blessings fled:
This hand that wrote, this ever-teeming head,
This flickering heart is full of chance and change;
I would not have you watch my weaknesses,
Nor how my foolish likings roam and range,
Nor how the mushroom friendships of a day
Hastened in hot-bed ripeness to decay,
Nor how to mine own self I grow so strange.

So anathema to editors, maranatha to publishers of all such hypothetical
post-obits!

* * * * *

Every one can comprehend something of an author's ease, when he sees his
manuscript in print: it is safe; no longer a treasure uninsurable, no
longer a locked-up care: it is emancipated, glorified, incapable of real
extermination; it has reached a changeless condition; the chrysalis of
illegible cacography has burst its bonds, and flies living through the
world on the wings of those true Daedali, Faust, and Gutenberg: the
transition-state is passed: henceforth for his brain-child set free from
that nervous slumber, its parent calmly can expect the oblivion of no
more than a death-like sleep, if he be not indeed buoyed up with certain
hope of immortality. "'Tis pleasant sure to see one's self in print," is
the adequate cause for ninety books out of a hundred; and, though zeal
might be the ostentatious stalking-horse, my candour shall give no
better excuse for the f