se.

"I have been butting my skull against a wall," he had said in those
hours of confidence; "and, to be as sublime a blockhead, if you'll allow
me the word, you, my dear fellow, have kept sounding the charge. We've
sat prating here of 'success,' heaven help us, like chanting monks in a
cloister, hugging the sweet delusion that it lies somewhere in the
work itself, in the expression, as you said, of one's subject or the
intensification, as somebody else somewhere says, of one's note. One has
been going on in short as if the only thing to do were to accept the law
of one's talent and thinking that if certain consequences didn't follow
it was only because one wasn't logical enough. My disaster has served
me right--I mean for using that ignoble word at all. It's a mere
distributor's, a mere hawker's word. What _is_ 'success' anyhow? When a
book's right, it's right--shame to it surely if it isn't. When it sells
it sells--it brings money like potatoes or beer. If there's dishonour
one way and inconvenience the other, it certainly is comfortable, but
it as certainly isn't glorious to have escaped them. People of delicacy
don't brag either about their probity or about their luck. Success be
hanged!--I want to sell. It's a question of life and death. I must study
the way. I've studied too much the other way--I know the other way
now, every inch of it. I must cultivate the market--it's a science like
another. I must go in for an infernal cunning. It will be very amusing,
I foresee that; I shall lead a dashing life and drive a roaring trade.
I haven't been obvious--I must _be_ obvious. I haven't been popular--I
must _be_ popular. It's another art--or perhaps it isn't an art at
all. It's something else; one must find out what it is. Is it something
awfully queer?--you blush!--something barely decent? All the greater
incentive to curiosity! Curiosity's an immense motive; we shall have
tremendous sport. They all do it; it's only a question of how. Of course
I've everything to unlearn; but what is life, as Jane Highmore says,
but a lesson? I must get all I can, all she can give me, from Jane.
She can't explain herself much; she's all intuition; her processes are
obscure; it's the spirit that swoops down and catches her up. But I must
study her reverently in her works. Yes, you've defied me before, but
now my loins are girded: I declare I'll read one of them--I really will:
I'll put it through if I perish!"

I won't pretend that he