years, that is, for as long as the wind shall uniformly blow from one
quarter. To this degree of popularity the author had the hardihood to
aspire, while, in order to attain it, he assumed the daring resolution
to keep himself in the view of the public by frequent appearances
before them.

It must be added, that the author's incognito gave him greater courage
to renew his attempts to please the public, and an advantage similar
to that which Jack the Giant-killer received from his coat of
darkness. In sending the Abbot forth so soon after the Monastery, he
had used the well-known practice recommended by Bassanio:--

"In my school days, when I had lost one shaft,
I shot another of the self-same flight,
The self-same way, with more advised watch,
To find the other forth."

And, to continue the simile, his shafts, like those of the lesser
Ajax, were discharged more readily that the archer was as inaccessible
to criticism, personally speaking, as the Grecian archer under his
brother's sevenfold shield.

Should the reader desire to know upon what principles the Abbot was
expected to amend the fortune of the Monastery, I have first to
request his attention to the Introductory Epistle addressed to the
imaginary Captain Clutterbuck; a mode by which, like his predecessors
in this walk of fiction, the real author makes one of his _dramatis
personae_ the means of communicating his own sentiments to the
public, somewhat more artificially than by a direct address to the
readers. A pleasing French writer of fairy tales, Monsieur Pajon,