“Homer—If you will engage to pay for the working of this journal during the twelve months it would take us to explain the defects in your poem, we are quite willing to undertake the job.”
Insults and disappointments like these are the ordinary lot of rising genius, and should only nerve you to greater efforts. Perseverance will ultimately win, though it may not deserve, success.
And who shall paint the joy that will irradiate life when you find yourself in print for the first time? who shall describe the delirium of reading your own verses? a delight leading you almost to forgive the printer’s error which turns your “blessed rule” into “blasted fool,” and your “Spring quickens” into “Spring Chickens”; who will count the copies of that paper you will send to all your friends?
By-and-by your fame spreads and you rank of the élite; you assume the air and manners of a poet. You wear your hair long (it saves barber’s charges). You are fond of solitary walks, communing with yourself (or somebody else). You assume a rapt and abstracted air in society (when asked to stand a drink). You despise mere mundane matters (debts, engagements, and the like). Your eyes have a far-away look (when you meet a poor relation). When people talk of Tennyson, Browning, Swinburne, etc., you smile pityingly, and say: “Ah, yes! Poor Alfred (or Robert or Algernon, as the case may be); he means well—he means well;” and you ask your friends if they have read your “Spirit Reveries,” and if not, you immediately produce it from your pocket, and read it (never be without copies of your latest pieces for this purpose).
And now farewell and God-speed. You are on the high road to renown.
“Farewell, but whenever you welcome the hour,
They crown you with laurels and throne you in power,
Oh, think of the friend who first guided your way,
And set you such rules you could not go astray,
And who, as reward, doth but one favour claim,