Why do we say "Nothing succeeds like success"?

Meaning:

One success leads to another

Background:

According to Gregory Titelman's America's Popular Proverbs and Sayings, this very American expression originated in France (“Rien ne réussit comme le succès”) with the earliest known use appearing in AngePitou (1854) a book by Alexander Dumas, also known as Storming the Bastille or Six Years Later. Dumas is better known as the author of The Count of Monte Cristo and The Three Musketeers.

But a reference at Google Books points to an 1837 edition of the magazine Revue des deux Mondes that quotes French author M. Jules Janin saying this some years earlier.

Citations for the earliest use in America also vary, but date to the 1850s or '60s.

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