" If I could get a volume of my
excellent namesake's Hudibras out of the list of my works, I should
be robbed of my last shred of literary grievance, so I say nothing
about this, but keep it secret, lest some worse thing should happen
to me. Besides, I have a great respect for my namesake, and always
say that if Erewhon had been a racehorse it would have been got by
Hudibras out of Analogy. Someone said this to me many years ago,
and I felt so much flattered that I have been repeating the remark
as my own ever since.
But how small are these grievances as compared with those endured
without a murmur by hundreds of writers far more deserving than
myself. When I see the scores and hundreds of workers in the
reading-room who have done so much more than I have, but whose work
is absolutely fruitless to themselves, and when I think of the
prompt recognition obtained by my own work, I ask myself what I have
done to be thus rewarded. On the other hand, the feeling that I
have succeeded far beyond my deserts hitherto, makes it all the
harder for me to acquiesce without complaint in the extinction of a
career which I honestly believe to be a promising one; and once more
I repeat that, unless the Museum authorities give me back my Frost,
or put a locked clasp on Arvine, my career must be extinguished.
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