have made my fortune by this time, and be in the enjoyment of the
greatest prosperity. It must be remembered, too, that the opinion of
the Critics on the Hearth is always volunteered (indeed, one would as
soon think of asking for it as for a loan from the Sultan of Turkey),
and in nine cases out of ten it is unfavourable. One has no objection
to their praise, nor to any amount of it; what is so abhorrent is their
advice, and still more their disapproval. It is like throwing 'half a
brick' at you, which, utterly valueless in itself, still hurts you when
it hits you. And the worst of it is that, apart from their rubbishy
opinions, one likes these people; they are one's friends and relatives,
and to cut one's moorings from them altogether would be to sail over
the sea of life without a port to touch at.

The early life of the author is especially embittered by the utterances
of these good folks. As a prophet is of no honour in his own country,
so it is with the young aspirant for literary fame with his folks at
home. They not only disbelieve in him, but--generally, however, with
one or two exceptions, who are invaluable to him in the way of
encouragement--'make hay' of him and his pretensions in the most
heartless style. If he produces a poem, it achieves immortality in the
sense of his 'never hearing the last of it;' it is the jest of the
family till they have all grown up. But this he can bear, because his
noble mind recognises its own greatness; he regards his jeering
brethren in the same light as the philosophic writer beholds 'the vapid
and irreflective reader.' When they tell him they 'can't make head or
tail of his blessed poetry,' he comforts himself with the reflection of
the great German (which he has read in a translation) that the clearest
handwriting cannot be read by twilight. It is when his literary talents
have received more or less recognition from the public at large, that
home criticism becomes so painful to him. His brethren are then boys no