accidents of _luck_ that befall books. For it is well known to all
who watch literature with vigilance, that books and authors have their
fortunes, which travel upon a far different scale of proportions from
those that measure their merits. Not even the caprice or the folly of the
reading public is required to account for this. Very often, indeed, the
whole difference between an extensive circulation for one book, and none
at all for another of about equal merit, belongs to no particular
blindness in men, but to the simple fact, that the one _has_, whilst
the other has _not_, been brought effectually under the eyes of the
public. By far the greater part of books are lost, not because they are
rejected, but because they are never introduced. In any proper sense of
the word, very few books are published. Technically they are published;
which means, that for six or ten times they are _advertised_, but they are
not made known to _attentive_ ears, or to ears _prepared_ for attention.
And amongst the causes which account for this difference in the fortune of
books, although there are many, we may reckon, as foremost, _personal_
accidents of position in the authors. For instance, with us in England it
will do a bad book no _ultimate_ service, that it is written by a lord, or
a bishop, or a privy counsellor, or a member of Parliament--though,
undoubtedly, it will do an _instant_ service--it will sell an edition or
so. This being the case, it being certain that no rank will reprieve a bad
writer from _final_ condemnation, the sycophantic glorifier of the public
fancies his idol justified; but not so. A bad book, it is true, will not
be saved by advantages of position in the author; but a book moderately
good will be extravagantly aided by such advantages. Lectures on
_Christianity_, that happened to be respectably written and delivered, had
prodigious success in my young days, because, also, they happened to be
lectures of a prelate; three times the ability would not have procured
them any attention had they been the lectures of an obscure curate. Yet on
the other hand, it is but justice to say, that, if written with three