easonable prospect of reputation or profit; nothing but the
pleasure itself of composition--an enjoyment not at all amiss
in its way, and perhaps essential to the merit of the work in
hand, but which, in the long run, will hardly keep the chill
out of a writer's heart, or the numbness out of his fingers. To
this total lack of sympathy, at the age when his mind would
naturally have been most effervescent, the public owe it (and
it is certainly an effect not to be regretted, on either part),
that the author can show nothing for the thought and industry
of that portion of his life, save the forty sketches, or
thereabouts, included in these volumes. Much more, indeed, he
wrote; and some very small part of it might yet be rummaged out
(but it would not be worth the trouble) among the dingy pages
of fifteen or twenty year old periodicals, or within the shabby
morocco covers of faded Souvenirs. The remainder of the works
alluded to had a very brief existence, but, on the score of
brilliancy, enjoyed a fate vastly superior to that of their
brotherhood, which succeeded in getting through the press. In a
word, the author burned them without mercy or remorse, and,
moreover, without any subsequent regret, and had more than one
occasion to marvel that such very dull stuff as he knew his
condemned manuscripts to be, should yet have possessed
inflammability enough to set the chimney on fire!...

"As he glances over these long-forgotten pages, and considers
his way of life while composing them, the author can very
clearly discern why all this was so. After so many sober years,
he would have reason to be ashamed if he could not criticise
his own work as fairly as another man's; and, though it is
little his business and perhaps still less his interest, he can
hardly resist a temptation to achieve something of the sort. If
writers were allowed to do so, and would perform the task with
perfect sincerity and unreserve, their opinions of their own
productions would often be more valuable and instructive than
the works themselves. At all events, there can be no harm in
the author's remarking that he rather wonders how the
_Twice-Told Tales_ should have gained what vogue they did, than
that it was so little and so gradual. They have the pale tint
of flowers tha