"I thank you most heartily for your kind wishes in favor of the
forthcoming work, and sincerely join my own prayers to yours in its
behalf, but without much confidence of a good result. My own opinion
is, that I am not really a popular writer, and that what popularity
I have gained is chiefly accidental, and owing to other causes than
my own kind or degree of merit. Possibly I may (or may not) deserve
something better than popularity; but looking at all my productions,
and especially this latter one, with a cold or critical eye, I can
see that they do not make their appeal to the popular mind. It is
odd enough, moreover, that my own individual taste is for quite
another class of works than those which I myself am able to write.
If I were to meet with such books as mine, by another writer, I
don't believe I should be able to get through them.

* * * * *
"To return to my own moonshiny Romance; its fate will soon
be settled, for Smith and Elder mean to publish on the 28th of this
month. Poor Ticknor will have a tight scratch to get his edition
out contemporaneously; they having sent him the third volume
only a week ago. I think, however, there will be no danger of
piracy in America. Perhaps nobody will think it worth stealing.
Give my best regards to William Story, and look well at his Cleopatra,
for you will meet her again in one of the chapters which I wrote
with most pleasure. If he does not find himself famous henceforth,
the fault will be none of mine. I, at least, have done my duty by
him, whatever delinquency there may be on the part of other critics.

"Smith and Elder persist in calling the book 'Transformation,' which
gives one the idea of Harlequin in a pantomime; but I have strictly
enjoined upon Ticknor to call it 'The Marble Faun; a Romance of Monte