confidence to a more impartial tribunal.

His first work was successful; perhaps for this reason--that it bore the
stamp of the Honest and the Real. He did not sit down to report of what
he had never seen, to dilate on what he had never felt. A quiet and
thoughtful observer of life, his descriptions were the more vivid,
because his own first impressions were not yet worn away. His
experience had sunk deep; not on the arid surface of matured age, but in
the fresh soil of youthful emotions. Another reason, perhaps, that
obtained success for his essay was, that he had more varied and more
elaborate knowledge than young authors think it necessary to possess.
He did not, like Cesarini, attempt to make a show of words upon a
slender capital of ideas. Whether his style was eloquent or homely; it
was still in him a faithful transcript of considered and digested
thought. A third reason--and I dwell on these points not more to
elucidate the career of Maltravers than as hints which may be useful to
others--a third reason why Maltravers obtained a prompt and favourable
reception from the public was, that he had not hackneyed his
peculiarities of diction and thought in that worst of all schools for
the literary novice--the columns of a magazine. Periodicals form an
excellent mode of communication between the public and an author
/already/ established, who has lost the charm of novelty, but gained the
weight of acknowledged reputation; and who, either upon politics or
criticism, seeks for frequent and continuous occasions to enforce his
peculiar theses and doctrines. But, upon the young writer, this mode of
communication, if too long continued, operates most injuriously both as
to his future prospects and his own present taste and style. With
respect to the first, it familiarises the public to his mannerism (and
all writers worth reading have mannerism) in a form to which the said
public are not inclined to attach much weight. He forestalls in a few