Let no man tempt Gods and Columns, without weighing well the
consequences of his experiment. He who publishes a book, attended with
a moderate success, passes a mighty barrier. He will often look back
with a sigh of regret at the land he has left for ever. The beautiful
and decent obscurity of hearth and home is gone. He can no longer feel
the just indignation of manly pride when he finds himself ridiculed or
reviled. He has parted with the shadow of his life. His motives may be
misrepresented, his character belied; his manners, his person, his
dress, the "very trick of his walk" are all fair food for the cavil and
the caricature. He can never go back, he cannot even pause; he has
chosen his path, and all the natural feelings that make the nerve and
muscle of the active being urge him to proceed. To stop short is to
fail. He has told the world that he will make a name; and he must be
set down as a pretender, or toil on till the boast be fulfilled. Yet
Maltravers thought nothing of all this when, intoxicated with his own
dreams and aspirations, he desired to make a world his confidant; when
from the living nature, and the lore of books, and the mingled result of
inward study and external observation, he sought to draw forth something
that might interweave his name with the pleasurable associations of his
kind. His easy fortune and lonely state gave him up to his own thoughts
and contemplations; they suffused his mind, till it ran over upon the
page which makes the channel that connects the solitary Fountain with
the vast Ocean of Human Knowledge. The temperament of Maltravers was,
as we have seen, neither irritable nor fearful. He formed himself, as a
sculptor forms, with a model before his eyes and an ideal in his heart.
He endeavoured, with labour and patience, to approach nearer and nearer
with every effort to the standard of such excellence as he thought might
ultimately be attained by a reasonable ambition; and when, at last, his
judgment was satisfied, he surrendered the product with a tranquil