Why "Thoughts on the Universe, by Byles Gridley, A. M.," had not met
with an eager welcome and a permanent demand from the discriminating
public, it would take us too long to inquire in detail. Indeed; he
himself was never able to account satisfactorily for the state of things
which his bookseller's account made evident to him. He had read and
re-read his work; and the more familiar he became with it, the less was
he able to understand the singular want of popular appreciation of what
he could not help recognizing as its excellences. He had a special copy
of his work, printed on large paper and sumptuously bound. He loved to
read in this, as people read over the letters of friends who have long
been dead; and it might have awakened a feeling of something far removed
from the ludicrous, if his comments on his own production could have
been heard. "That's a thought, now, for you!--See Mr. Thomas Babington
Macaulay's Essay printed six years after thus book." "A felicitous
image! and so everybody would have said if only Mr. Thomas Carlyle had
hit upon it." "If this is not genuine pathos, where will you find it, I
should like to know? And nobody to open the book where it stands written
but one poor old man--in this generation, at least--in this generation!"
It may be doubted whether he would ever have loved his book with such
jealous fondness if it had gone through a dozen editions, and everybody
was quoting it to his face. But now it lived only for him; and to him it
was wife and child, parent, friend, all in one, as Hector was all in all
to his spouse. He never tired of it, and in his more sanguine moods he
looked forward to the time when the world would acknowledge its merits,
and his genius would find full recognition. Perhaps he was right: more
than one book which seemed dead and was dead for contemporary readers
has had a resurrection when the rivals who triumphed over it lived only
in the tombstone memory of antiquaries. Comfort for some of us, dear
fellow-writer.

It followed from the way in which he lived that he must have some means
of support upon which he could depend. He was economical, if not over
frugal in some of his habits; but he bought books, and took newspapers
and reviews, and had money when money was needed; the fact being, though
it was not generally known, that a distant relative had not long before
died, leaving him a very comfortable property.

His money matters had led him to have occasional deal