complain of the sale, because, unless on very felicitous occasions, or
on those which are equally the reverse, literary popularity is not
gained or lost by a single publication.  Leisure must be allowed for
the tide both to flow and ebb.  But I was conscious that, in my
situation, not to advance was in some Degree to recede, and being
naturally unwilling to think that the principle of decay lay in
myself, I was at least desirous to know of a certainty, whether the
degree of discountenance which I had incurred, was now owing to an
ill-managed story, or an ill-chosen subject. 

I was never, I confess, one of those who are willing to suppose the
brains of an author to be a kind of milk, which will not stand above a
single creaming, and who are eternally harping to young authors to
husband their efforts, and to be chary of their reputation, lest it
grow hackneyed in the eyes of men.  Perhaps I was, and have always
been, the more indifferent to the degree of estimation in which I
might be held as an author, because I did not put so high a value as
many others upon what is termed literary reputation in the abstract,
or at least upon the species of popularity which had fallen to my
share; for though it were worse than affectation to deny that my