surely it had come.

The novel-reading world did not go mad about The Warden; but I soon
felt that it had not failed as the others had failed. There were
notices of it in the press, and I could discover that people around
me knew that I had written a book. Mr. Longman was complimentary,
and after a while informed me that there would be profits to divide.
At the end of 1855 I received a cheque for (pounds)9 8s. 8d., which was
the first money I had ever earned by literary work;--that (pounds)20 which
poor Mr. Colburn had been made to pay certainly never having been
earned at all. At the end of 1856 I received another sum of (pounds)10
15s. 1d. The pecuniary success was not great. Indeed, as regarded
remuneration for the time, stone-breaking would have done better.
A thousand copies were printed, of which, after a lapse of five or
six years, about 300 had to be converted into another form, and sold
as belonging to a cheap edition. In its original form The Warden
never reached the essential honour of a second edition.

I have already said of the work that it failed altogether in
the purport for which it was intended. But it has a merit of its
own,--a merit by my own perception of which I was enabled to see
wherein lay whatever strength I did possess. The characters of the
bishop, of the archdeacon, of the archdeacon's wife, and especially
of the warden, are all well and clearly drawn. I had realised to
myself a series of portraits, and had been able so to put them on
the canvas that my readers should see that which I meant them to
see. There is no gift which an author can have more useful to him
than this. And the style of the English was good, though from most
unpardonable carelessness the grammar was not unfrequently faulty.
With such results I had no doubt but that I would at once begin