After accounting for his delay in replying to hers by the fact of a long absence from home, during which his letters had accumulated, whence “it has lain unanswered till the last of a numerous file, not from disrespect or indifference to its contents, but because in truth it is not an easy task to answer it, nor a pleasant one to cast a damp over the high spirits and the generous desires of youth,” he goes on to say:  “What you are I can only infer from your letter, which appears to be written in sincerity, though I may suspect that you have used a fictitious signature.  Be that as it may, the letter and the verses bear the same stamp, and I can well understand the state of mind they indicate.

* * * * *

“It is not my advice that you have asked as to the direction of your talents, but my opinion of them, and yet the opinion may be worth little, and the advice much.  You evidently possess, and in no inconsiderable degree, what Wordsworth calls the ‘faculty of verse.’  I am not depreciating it when I say that in these times it is not rare.  Many volumes of poems are now published every year without attracting public attention, any one of which if it had appeared half a century ago, would have obtained a high reputation for its author.  Whoever, therefore, is ambitious of distinction in this way ought to be prepared for disappointment.

“But it is not with a view to distinction that you should cultivate this talent, if you consult your own happiness.  I, who have made literature my profession, and devoted my life to it, and have never for a moment repented of the deliberate choice, think myself, nevertheless, bound in duty to caution every young man who applies as an aspirant to me for encouragement and advice, against taking so perilous a course.  You will say that a woman has no need of such a caution; there can be no peril in it for her.  In a certain sense this is true; but there is a danger of which I would, with all kindness and all earnestness, warn you.  The day dreams in which you habitually indulge are likely to induce a distempered state of mind; and in proportion as all the ordinary uses of the world seem to you flat and unprofitable, you will be unfitted for them without becoming fitted for anything else.  Literature cannot be the business of a woman’s life, and it ought not to be.  The more she is engaged in her proper duties, the less leisure will she have for it, even as an accomplishment and a recreation.  To those duties you have not yet been called, and when you are you will be less eager for celebrity.  You will not seek in imagination for excitement, of which the vicissitudes of this life, and the anxieties from which you must not hope to be exempted, be your state what it may, will bring with them but too much.