Yet do not be made conceited by obscurity, any more than by notoriety.  Many fine geniuses have been long neglected; but what would become of us, if all the neglected were to turn out geniuses?  It is unsafe reasoning from either extreme.  You are not necessarily writing like Holmes because your reputation for talent began in college, nor like Hawthorne because you have been before the public ten years without an admirer.  Above all, do not seek to encourage yourself by dwelling on the defects of your rivals:  strength comes only from what is above you.  Northcote, the painter, said, that, in observing an inferior picture, he always felt his spirits droop, with the suspicion that perhaps he deceived himself and his own paintings were no better; but the works of the mighty masters always gave him renewed strength, in the hope that perhaps his own had in their smaller way something of the same divine quality.

Do not complacently imagine, because your first literary attempt proved good and successful, that your second will doubtless improve upon it.  The very contrary sometimes happens.  A man dreams for years over one projected composition, all his reading converges to it, all his experience stands related to it, it is the net result of his existence up to a certain time, it is the cistern into which he pours his accumulated life.  Emboldened by success, he mistakes the cistern for a fountain, and instantly taps his brain again.  The second production, as compared with the first, costs but half the pains and attains but a quarter part of the merit; a little more of fluency and facility perhaps,—­but the vigor, the wealth, the originality, the head of water, in short, are wanting.  One would think that almost any intelligent man might write one good thing in a lifetime, by reserving himself long enough:  it is the effort after quantity which proves destructive.  The greatest man has passed his zenith, when he once begins to cheapen his style of work and sink into a book-maker:  after that, though the newspapers may never hint at it, nor his admirers own it, the decline of his career is begun.

Yet the author is not alone to blame for this, but also the world which first tempts and then reproves him.  Goethe says, that, if a person once does a good thing, society forms a league to prevent his doing another.  His seclusion is gone, and therefore his unconsciousness and his leisure; luxuries tempt him from his frugality, and soon he must toil for luxuries; then, because he has done one thing well, he is urged to squander himself and do a thousand things badly.  In this country especially, if one can learn languages, he must go to Congress; if he can argue a case, he must become agent of a factory:  out of this comes a variety of training which is very valuable, but a wise man must have strength to call in his resources before middle-life, prune off divergent activities, and concentrate himself on the main work, be it what it may.  It is shameful to see the indeterminate lives of many of our gifted men, unable to resist the temptations of a busy land, and so losing themselves in an aimless and miscellaneous career.