I Had Supposed That Every Thing Would
Make Way For The Pleasures Of Melancholy.
My gorge at length rose within me.
I took up my manuscript; thrust it
into my pocket, and walked out of the room: making some noise as I
went, to let my departure be heard. The publisher, however, was too
much busied in minor concerns to notice it. I was suffered to walk
down-stairs without being called back. I sallied forth into the street,
but no clerk was sent after me, nor did the publisher call after me
from the drawing-room window. I have been told since, that he
considered me either a madman or a fool. I leave you to judge how much
he was in the wrong in his opinion.
When I turned the corner my crest fell. I cooled down in my pride and
my expectations, and reduced my terms with the next bookseller to whom
I applied. I had no better success: nor with a third: nor with a
fourth. I then desired the booksellers to make an offer themselves; but
the deuce an offer would they make. They told me poetry was a mere
drug; everybody wrote poetry; the market was overstocked with it. And
then, they said, the title of my poem was not taking: that pleasures of
all kinds were worn threadbare; nothing but horrors did now-a-days, and
even these were almost worn out. Tales of pirates, robbers, and bloody
Turks might answer tolerably well; but then they must come from some
established well-known name, or the public would not look at them.
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