She was very
kind about it, and always had some praise to bestow, but at last she
warned me against spending too much time upon them. She said--how well I
recollect it!--that she knew writing stories was a great amusement, and
_she_ thought a harmless one, though many people, she was aware, thought
otherwise; but that at my age it would be bad for me to be much taken up
with my own compositions. Later still--it was after she had gone to
Winchester--she sent me a message to this effect, that if I would take
her advice I should cease writing till I was sixteen; that she had
herself often wished she had read more, and written less in the
corresponding years of her own life.' As this niece was only twelve
years old at the time of her aunt's death, these words seem to imply that
the juvenile tales to which I have referred had, some of them at least,
been written in her childhood.
But between these childish effusions, and the composition of her living
works, there intervened another stage of her progress, during which she
produced some stories, not without merit, but which she never considered
worthy of publication.
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