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 the
reception which it met with was far beyond my wildest expectations. The
public were delighted with it, but what were my feelings? Anything,
alas! but those of delight. No sooner did the public express its
satisfaction at the result of my endeavours, than my perverse imagination
began to conceive a thousand chimerical doubts; forthwith I sat down to
analyse it; and my worst enemy, and all people have their enemies,
especially authors--my worst enemy could not have discovered or sought to
discover a tenth part of the faults which I, the author and creator of
the unfortunate production, found or sought to find in it. It has been
said that love makes us blind to the faults of the loved object--common
love does, perhaps--the love of a father to his child, or that of a lover
to his mistress, but not the inordinate love of an author to his works,
at least not the love which one like myself bears to his works: to be
brief, I discovered a thousand faults in my work, which neither public
nor critics discovered. However, I was beginning to get over this
misery, and to forgive my work all its imperfections, when--and I shake
when I mention it--the same kind of idea which perplexed me with regard
to the hawks and the gypsy pony rushed into my mind, and I forthwith
commenced touching the objects around me, in order to baffle the evil
chance, as you call it; it was neither more nor less than a doubt of the
legality of my claim to the thoughts, expressions and situations
contained in the book; that is, to all that constituted the book. How
did I get them? How did they come into my mind? Did I invent them? Did
they or