the party
injured, and resent your innocence as an imputation on their judgment.
The celebrated Bub Doddington, when out of favour at court, said 'he
would not _justify_ before his sovereign: it was for Majesty to be
displeased, and for him to believe himself in the wrong!' The public are
not quite so modest. People already begin to talk of the Scotch Novels
as overrated. How then can common authors be supposed to keep their
heads long above water? As a general rule, all those who live by the
public starve, and are made a by-word and a standing jest into the
bargain. Posterity is no better (not a bit more enlightened or more
liberal), except that you are no longer in their power, and that the
voice of common fame saves them the trouble of deciding on your claims.
The public now are the posterity of Milton and Shakespear. Our posterity
will be the living public of a future generation. When a man is dead,
they put money in his coffin, erect monuments to his memory, and
celebrate the anniversary of his birthday in set speeches. Would they
take any notice of him if he were living? No!--I was complaining of this
to a Scotchman who had been attending a dinner and a subscription to
raise a monument to Burns. He replied he would sooner subscribe twenty
pounds to his monument than have given it him while living; so that if
the poet were to come to life again, he would treat him just as he was
treated in fact. This was an honest Scotchman. What _he_ said, the rest
would do.

Enough: my soul, turn from them, and let me try to regain the
obscurity and quiet that I love, 'far from the madding strife,' in some
sequestered corner of my own, or in some far-distant land! In the latter
case, I might carry with me as a consolation the passage in Bolinbroke's
_Reflections on Exile,_ in which he describes in glowing colours the
resources which a man may always find within himself, and of which the
world cannot deprive him:--

'Believe me, the providence of God has established such an order in
the world, that of all which belongs to us the least valuable parts can
alone fall under the will of others. Whatever is best is safest; lies
out of the reach of human power; can neither be given nor taken away.
Such is this great and beautiful work of nature, the world. Such is the
mind of man, which contemplates and admires the world, whereof it makes
the noblest part. These are inseparably ours, and as long as we remain
in one we shall enjoy the