However we may account for it, he found difficulty in regarding himself as a great author.[384] When this modesty of his came into conflict with the other opinion that he had always been inclined to hold--that the popularity of books is a test of their merit--the result is amusing.

He was impelled at times to utter contemptuous words about the foolishness of the public, and of course he could not help being moved also in the other direction--to believe there was more in his writings than he had realized.

In one mood he said, "I thank God I can write ill enough for the present taste";[385] and "I have very little respect for that dear _publicum_ whom I am doomed to amuse, like Goody Trash in _Bartholomew Fair_, with rattles and gingerbread; and I should deal very uncandidly with those who may read my confessions were I to say I knew a public worth caring for, or capable of distinguishing the nicer beauties of composition.
They weigh good and evil qualities by the pound.

Get a good name and you may write trash.

Get a bad one and you may write like Homer, without pleasing a single reader."[386] Looking back from the end of his career to the time when _The Lady of the Lake_ was in the height of its success, he wrote: "It must not be supposed that I was either so ungrateful or so superabundantly candid as to despise or scorn the value of those whose voice had elevated me so much higher than my own opinion told me I deserved.