I had meanwhile been absent from England, and it was not till my return, some time later, that I had from my publisher any news of our venture.

But the news then met at a stroke all my curiosity: "I'm sorry to say the book has done nothing to speak of; I've never in all my experience seen one treated with more general and complete disrespect." There was thus to be nothing left me for fond subsequent reference--of which I doubtless give even now so adequate an illustration--save the rich reward of the singular interest attaching to the very intimacies of the effort.
It comes back to me, the whole "job," as wonderfully amusing and delightfully difficult from the first; since amusement deeply abides, I think, in any artistic attempt the basis and groundwork of which are conscious of a particular firmness.

On that hard fine floor the element of execution feels it may more or less confidently DANCE; in which case puzzling questions, sharp obstacles, dangers of detail, may come up for it by the dozen without breaking its heart or shaking its nerve.

It is the difficulty produced by the loose foundation or the vague scheme that breaks the heart--when a luckless fatuity has over-persuaded an author of the "saving" virtue of treatment.

Being "treated" is never, in a workable idea, a mere passive condition, and I hold no subject ever susceptible of help that isn't, like the embarrassed man of our proverbial wisdom, first of all able to help itself.