"Haworth, near Bradford,
"Yorkshire, January 19, 1837.
"Sir,--I most earnestly entreat you to read and pass your judgment
upon what I have sent you, because from the day of my birth to this
the nineteenth year of my life, I have lived among secluded hills,
where I could neither know what I was, or what I could do. I read for
the same reason that I ate or drank; because it was a real craving of
nature. I wrote on the same principle as I spoke--out of the impulse
and feelings of the mind; nor could I help it, for what came, came
out, and there was the end of it. For as to self-conceit, that could
not receive food from flattery, since to this hour, not half a dozen
people in the world know that I have ever penned a line.
"But a change has taken place now, sir: and I am arrived at an age
wherein I must do something for myself: the powers I possess must be
exercised to a definite end, and as I don't know them myself I must
ask of others what they are worth. Yet there is not one here to tell
me; and still, if they are worthless, time will henceforth be too
precious to be wasted on them.
"Do pardon me, sir, that I have ventured to come before one whose
works I have most loved in our literature, and who most has been with
me a divinity of the mind, laying before him one of my writings, and
asking of him a judgment of its contents.
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