asy
task to answer it, nor a pleasant one to cast a damp over the high
spirits and the generous desires of youth," he goes on to say: "What you
are I can only infer from your letter, which appears to be written in
sincerity, though I may suspect that you have used a fictitious
signature. Be that as it may, the letter and the verses bear the same
stamp, and I can well understand the state of mind they indicate.

* * * * *

"It is not my advice that you have asked as to the direction of your
talents, but my opinion of them, and yet the opinion may be worth little,
and the advice much. You evidently possess, and in no inconsiderable
degree, what Wordsworth calls the 'faculty of verse.' I am not
depreciating it when I say that in these times it is not rare. Many
volumes of poems are now published every year without attracting public
attention, any one of which if it had appeared half a century ago, would
have obtained a high reputation for its author. Whoever, therefore, is
ambitious of distinction in this way ought to be prepared for
disappointment.

"But it is not with a view to distinction that you should cultivate this
talent, if you consult your own happiness. I, who have made literature
my profession, and devoted my life to it, and have never for a moment
repented of the deliberate choice, think myself, nevertheless, bound in
duty to caution every young man who applies as an aspirant to me for
encouragement and advice, against taking so perilous a course. You will
say that a woman has no need of such a caution; there can be no peril in
it for her. In a certain sense this is true; but there is a danger of
which I would, with all kindness and all earnestness, warn you. The day
dreams in which you habitually indulge are likely to induce a distempered
state of mind; and in proportion as all the ordinary uses of the world
seem to you flat and unprofitable, you will be unfitted for them without
becoming fitted for anything else. Literature cannot be the business of
a woman's life, and it ought not to be. The more she is engaged in her
proper duties, the less leisure will she have for it, even as an
accomplishment and a recreation. To those duties you have not yet been
called, and when you are you will be less eager for celebrity. You will
not seek in imagination for excitement, of which the vicissitudes of this
life, and the anxieties from which you must not hope to be exempted, be
your state what it may, wi