Never in my life having heard of him, I looked in a “Manual of American Literature,” and there found that Mr. Walworth’s novel of “Warwick” had a sale of seventy-five thousand copies, and his “Delaplaine” of forty-five thousand.  Is it a success to have secured a sale like that for your books, and then to die, and have your brother penmen ask, “Who was he?” Yet, certainly, a sale of seventy-five thousand copies is not to be despised; and I fear I know many youths and maidens who would willingly write novels much poorer than “Warwick” for the sake of a circulation like that.  I do not think that Hawthorne, however, would have accepted these conditions; and he certainly did not have this style of success.

Nor do I think he had any right to expect it.  He had made his choice, and had reason to be satisfied.  The very first essential for literary success is to decide what success means.  If a young girl pines after the success of Marion Harland and Mrs. Southworth, let her seek it.  It is possible that she may obtain it, or surpass it; and though she might do better, she might do far worse.  It is, at any rate, a laudable aim to be popular:  popularity may be a very creditable thing, unless you pay too high a price for it.  It is a pleasant thing, and has many contingent advantages,—­balanced by this great danger, that one is apt to mistake it for real success.

“Learning hath made the most,” said old Fuller, “by those books on which the booksellers have lost.”  If this be true of learning, it is quite as true of genius and originality.  A book may be immediately popular and also immortal, but the chances are the other way.  It is more often the case that a great writer gradually creates the taste by which he is enjoyed.  Wordsworth in England and Emerson in America were striking instances of this; and authors of far less fame have yet the same choice which they had.  You can take the standard which the book market offers, and train yourself for that.  This will, in the present age, be sure to educate certain qualities in you,—­directness, vividness, animation, dash,—­even if it leaves other qualities untrained.  Or you can make a standard of your own, and aim at that, taking your chance of seeing the public agree with you.  Very likely you may fail; perhaps you may be wrong in your fancy, after all, and the public may be right:  if you fail, you may find it hard to bear; but, on the other hand, you may have the inward “glory and joy” which nothing but fidelity to an ideal standard can give.  All this applies to all forms of work, but it applies conspicuously to literature.