When I turned the corner my crest fell. I cooled down in my pride and
my expectations, and reduced my terms with the next bookseller to whom
I applied. I had no better success: nor with a third: nor with a
fourth. I then desired the booksellers to make an offer themselves; but
the deuce an offer would they make. They told me poetry was a mere
drug; everybody wrote poetry; the market was overstocked with it. And
then, they said, the title of my poem was not taking: that pleasures of
all kinds were worn threadbare; nothing but horrors did now-a-days, and
even these were almost worn out. Tales of pirates, robbers, and bloody
Turks might answer tolerably well; but then they must come from some
established well-known name, or the public would not look at them.

At last I offered to leave my poem with a bookseller to read it and
judge for himself. "Why, really, my dear Mr.--a--a--I forget your
name," said he, cutting an eye at my rusty coat and shabby gaiters,
"really, sir, we are so pressed with business just now, and have so
many manuscripts on hand to read, that we have not time to look at any
new production, but if you can call again in a week or two, or say the
middle of next month, we may be able to look over your writings and
give you an answer. Don't forget, the month after next--good morning,
sir--happy to see you any time you are passing this way"--so saying he
bowed me out in the civilest way imaginable. In short, sir, instead of
an eager competition to secure my poem I could not even get it read! In
the mean time I was harassed by letters from my friends, wanting to
know when the work was to appear; who was to be my publisher; but above
all things warning me not to let it go too cheap.

There was but one alternative left. I determined to publish the poem
myself; and to have my triumph over the booksellers, when it should
become the fashion of the day. I accordingly published the Pleasures of
Melancholy and ruined myself. Excepting the copies sent to the reviews,
and to my friends in the country, not one, I believe, ever left the
bookseller's warehouse. The printer's bill drained my purse, and the
only notice that was taken of my work was contained in the
advertisements paid for by myself.

I could have borne all this, and have attributed it as usual to the
mismanagement of the publisher, or the want of taste in the public: and
could have made the usual appeal to posterity, but my village friends
would not let m