e doubted his luck; he
doubted the continual absence of some of those misfortunes on which the
works of literary men are shipwrecked. Though he was aware of his own
power, he always, to the last, was afraid that his own deficiencies
should be too strong against him. It was his nature to be idle,--to put
off his work,--and then to be angry with himself for putting it off.
Ginger was hot in the mouth with him, and all the allurements of the
world were strong upon him. To find on Monday morning an excuse why he
should not on Monday do Monday's work was, at the time, an inexpressible
relief to him, but had become deep regret,--almost a remorse,--before
the Monday was over. To such a one it was not given to believe in
himself with that sturdy rock-bound foundation which we see to have
belonged to some men from the earliest struggles of their career. To
him, then, must have come an inexpressible pang when he was told that
his story must be curtailed.

Who else would have told such a story of himself to the first
acquaintance he chanced to meet? Of Thackeray it might be predicted that
he certainly would do so. No little wound of the kind ever came to him
but what he disclosed it at once. "They have only bought so many of my
new book." "Have you seen the abuse of my last number?" "What am I to
turn my hand to? They are getting tired of my novels." "They don't read
it," he said to me of _Esmond_. "So you don't mean to publish my work?"
he said once to a publisher in an open company. Other men keep their
little troubles to themselves. I have heard even of authors who have
declared how all the publishers were running after their books; I have
heard some discourse freely of their fourth and fifth editions; I have
known an author to boast of his thousands sold in this country, and his
tens of thousands in America; but I never heard anyone else declare that
no one would read his _chef-d'oeuvre_, and that the world was becoming
tired of him. It was he who said, when he was fifty, that a man past
fifty should never write a novel.

And yet, as I have said, he was from an early age fully conscious of his
own ability. That he was so is to be seen in the handling of many of
his early works,--in _Barry Lyndon_, for instance, and the _Memoirs of
Mr. C. James Yellowplush_. The sound is too certain for doubt of that
kind. But he had not then, nor did he ever achieve that assurance of
public favour which makes a man confident that his work wil