letter which the young man wrote to her, announcing the scandalous
injustice with which he was treated. You remark three words misspelt
in the first five lines; and you fancy you have fathomed the secret
of the plucking.

I have sometimes tried, but in vain, to discover the law which
regulates the attainment of extreme popularity. Extreme popularity,
in this country and age, appears a very arbitrary thing. I defy any
person to predict a priori what book, or song, or play, or picture,
is to become the rage,--to utterly transcend all competition. I
believe, indeed, that there cannot be popularity for even a short
time, without some kind or degree of merit to deserve it; and in
any case there is no other standard to which one can appeal than
the deliberate judgment of the mass of educated persons. If you
are quite convinced that a thing is bad which all such think good,
why, of course you are wrong. If you honestly think Shakspeare
a fool, you are aware you must be mistaken. And so, if a book,
or a picture, or a play, or a song, be really good, and if it be
properly brought before the public notice, you may, as a general
rule, predict that it will attain a certain measure of success.
But the inexplicable thing--the thing of which I am quite unable to
trace the law--is extreme success. How is it that one thing shoots
ahead of everything else of the same class; and without being
materially better, or even materially different, leaves everything
else out of sight behind? Why is it that Eclipse is first and the
rest nowhere, while the legs and wind of Eclipse are no whit better
than the legs and wind of all the rest? If twenty novels of nearly
equal merit are published, it is not impossible that one shall dart
ahead of the remaining nineteen; that it shall be found in every
library; that Mr. Mudie may announce that he has 3250 copies of