For, in
truth, the public does not like to think; it likes to be amused;
and conceives a sort of hatred against the writer who would force
it to the use of its intellect. This is invariably the case; it
will be so with you. If the public finds anything in your work
that can be condemned, it will be but too happy to pass sentence;
if it can make out to think that you are a pretender, it will
gladly do so; if it can turn its back upon you and ignore you, its
back, and nothing else, you will surely see. And this on account
of your merits. You really have thoughts. You make combinations
of your own. You have freighted your words out of your own mental
experience. You do not flatter any of the sects by using their
cant. Now, then, be sure that you have got to do finished work,
finished in every minutest particular, for years, before your
claims will be allowed.
If you /were/ a pretender, your success in immediate prospect would
be more promising; the very difficulty is that you are not--that
you think--that the public must read you /humbly/, confessing that
you have intelligence beyond its own. I said that the general
public wants to be amused: I now add that it dearly desires to be
flattered, or at least allowed to flatter itself. Those people who
have no thoughts of their own are the very ones who hate mortally
to admit to themselves that any intelligence in the world is superior
to their own.
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