Hitherto, literature has been merely my relaxation,--the amusement of perhaps a month in the year.

I have never considered it as the means of support.

I have chosen my own topics, taken my own time, and dictated my own terms.
The thought of becoming a bookseller's hack; of writing to relieve, not the fulness of the mind, but the emptiness of the pocket; of spurring a jaded fancy to reluctant exertion; of filling sheets with trash merely that the sheets may be filled; of bearing from publishers and editors what Dryden bore from Tonson, and what, to my own knowledge, Mackintosh bore from Lardner, is horrible to me.

Yet thus it must be, if I should quit office.

Yet to hold office merely for the sake of emolument would be more horrible still.