Periodicals sadly mortgaged the claims that Hazlitt, and many others of
his contemporaries, had upon a vast reversionary estate of Fame. But
I here speak too politically; to some the _res angustoe domi_ leave no
option. And, as Aristotle and the Greek proverb have it, we cannot carve
out all things with the knife of the Delphic cutler.

The second work that Maltravers put forth, at an interval of eighteen
months from the first, was one of a graver and higher nature; it served
to confirm his reputation: and that is success enough for a second
work, which is usually an author's "_pons asinorum_." He who, after a
triumphant first book, does not dissatisfy the public with a second,
has a fair chance of gaining a fixed station in literature. But now
commenced the pains and perils of the after-birth. By a maiden effort an
author rarely makes enemies. His fellow-writers are not yet prepared
to consider him as a rival; if he be tolerably rich, they unconsciously
trust that he will not become a regular, or, as they term it, "a
professional" author: he did something just to be talked of; he may
write no more, or his second book may fail. But when that second book
comes out, and does not fail, they begin to look about them; envy
wakens, malice begins. And all the old school--gentlemen who have
retired on their pensions of renown--regard him as an intruder: then
the sneer, then the frown, the caustic irony, the biting review, the
depreciating praise. The novice begins to think that he is further from
the goal than before he set out upon the race.

Maltravers had, upon the whole, a tolerably happy temperament; but
he was a very proud man, and he had the nice soul of a courageous,
honourable, punctilious gentleman. He thought it singular that society
should call upon him, as a gentleman, to shoot his best friend, if that
friend affronted him with a rude word; and yet that, as an author, every
fool and liar might, with perfect impunity, cover reams of paper with
the most virulent personal abuse of him.

It was one evening in the early summer that, revolving anxious and
doubtful thoughts, Ernest sauntered gloomily along his terrace,

"And watched with wistful eyes the setting sun."

when he perceived a dusty travelling carriage whirled along the road
by the ha-ha, and a hand waved in recognition from the open window. His
guests had been so rare, and his friends were so few, that Maltravers
could not conjecture who was his intend