And what added a certain pride to the author’s satisfaction in this assent, was, that the answer opened by
“Sir,”—
which gave her an elevation to manly consequence, that had not been accorded to her by Mr. Dodsley, whose reply began
“Sir, or Madam.”
The young agent was muffled up now by the laughing committee, in an old great coat, and a large old hat, to give him a somewhat antique as well as vulgar disguise; and was sent forth in the dark of the evening with the two first volumes to Fleet-street, where he left them to their fate.
In trances of impatience the party awaited the issue of the examination.
But they were all let down into the very ‘Slough of Despond,’ when the next coffee-house letter coolly declared, that Mr. Lowndes could not think of publishing an unfinished book; though he liked the work, and should be ‘ready to purchase and print it when it should be finished.’
There was nothing in this unreasonable; yet the disappointed author, tired of what she deemed such priggish punctilio, gave up, for awhile, and in dudgeon, all thought of the scheme.
Nevertheless, to be thwarted on the score of our inclination acts more frequently as a spur than as a bridle; the third volume, therefore, which finished The young lady’s entrance into the world, was, ere another year could pass away, almost involuntarily completed and copied.
But while the scribe was yet wavering whether to abandon or to prosecute her enterprise, the chasm caused by this suspense to the workings of her imagination, left an opening from their vagaries to a mental interrogatory, whether it were right to allow herself such an amusement, with whatever precautions she might keep it from the world, unknown to her father?