e
actions--Inmost bosom--Give it up--Chance resemblance--Rascally
newspaper.

'An author,' said I, addressing my host; 'is it possible that I am under
the roof of an author?'

'Yes,' said my host, sighing, 'my name is so and so, and I am the author
of so and so; it is more than probable that you have heard both of my
name and works. I will not detain you much longer with my history; the
night is advancing, and the storm appears to be upon the increase. My
life since the period of my becoming an author may be summed briefly as
an almost uninterrupted series of doubts, anxieties, and trepidations. I
see clearly that it is not good to love anything immoderately in this
world, but it has been my misfortune to love immoderately everything on
which I have set my heart. This is not good, I repeat--but where is the
remedy? The ancients were always in the habit of saying, "Practise
moderation," but the ancients appear to have considered only one portion
of the subject. It is very possible to practise moderation in some
things, in drink and the like--to restrain the appetites--but can a man
restrain the affections of his mind, and tell them, so far you shall go,
and no farther? Alas, no! for the mind is a subtle principle, and cannot
be confined. The winds may be imprisoned; Homer says that Odysseus
carried certain winds in his ship, confined in leathern bags, but Homer
never speaks of confining the affections. It were but right that those
who exhort us against inordinate affections, and setting our hearts too
much upon the world and its vanities, would tell us how to avoid doing
so.

'I need scarcely tell you that no sooner did I become an author than I
gave myself up immoderately to my vocation. It became my idol, and, as a
necessary consequence, it has proved a source of misery and disquietude
to me, instead of pleasure and blessing. I had trouble enough in writing
my first work, and I was not long in discovering that it was one thing to
write a stirring and spirited address to a set of county electors, and
another widely different to produce a work at all calculated to make an
impression upon the great world. I felt, however, that I was in my
proper sphere, and by dint of unwearied diligence and exertion I
succeeded in evolving from the depths of my agitated breast a work which,
though it did not exactly please me, I thought would serve to make an
experiment upon the public; so I laid it before the public, and