Some people think I must be depressed and discouraged because my books do not make more noise; but, after all, whether people read my books or no is their affair, not mine. I know by my sales that few read my books. If I write at all, it follows that I want to be read and miss my mark if I am not. So also with _Narcissus_. Whatever I do falls dead, and I would rather people let me see that they liked it. To this extent I certainly am disappointed. I am sorry not to have wooed the public more successfully. But I have been told that winning and wearing generally take something of the gilt off the wooing, and I am disposed to acquiesce cheerfully in not finding myself so received as that I need woo no longer. If I were to succeed I should be bored to death by my success in a fortnight and so, I am convinced, would my friends. Retirement is to me a condition of being able to work at all. I would rather write more books and music than spend much time over what I have already written; nor do I see how I could get retirement if I were not to a certain extent unpopular. It is this feeling on my own part—omnipresent with me when I am doing my best to please, that is to say, whenever I write—which is the cause why I do not, as people say, “get on.” If I had greatly cared about getting on I think I could have done so. I think I could even now write an anonymous book that would take the public as much as _Erewhon_ did. Perhaps I could not, but I think I could. The reason why I do not try is because I like doing other things better. What I most enjoy is running the view of evolution set forth in _Life and Habit_ and making things less easy for the hacks of literature and science; or perhaps even more I enjoy taking snapshots and writing music, though aware that I had better not enquire whether this last is any good or not. In fact there is nothing I do that I do not enjoy so keenly that I cannot tear myself away from it, and people who thus indulge themselves cannot have things both ways. I am so intent upon pleasing myself that I have no time to cater for the public. Some of them like things in the same way as I do; that class of people I try to please as well as ever I can. With others I have no concern, and they know it so they have no concern with me. I do not believe there is any other explanation of my failure to get on than this, nor do I see that any further explanation is needed. [1890.] ii Two or three people have asked me to return to the subject of my supposed failure and explain it more fully from my own point of view. I have had the subject on my notes for some time and it has bored me so much that it has had a good deal to do with my not having kept my Note-Books posted recently.