WORK. 153 



was altered afterwards, because it was too formal and cate- 

 gorical, and seemed to give the character of his grandfather 

 rather by means of a list of qualities than as a complete 

 picture. 



It was only within the last few years that he adopted a plan 

 of writing which he was convinced suited him best, and which 

 is described in the ' Recollections ' ; namely, writing a rough 

 copy straight off without the slightest attention to style. It 

 was characteristic of him that he felt unable to write with 

 sufficient want of care if he used his best paper, and thus it 

 was that he wrote on the backs of old proofs or manuscript. 

 The rough copy was then reconsidered, and a fair copy was 

 made. For this purpose he had foolscap paper ruled at wide 

 intervals, the lines being needed to prevent him writing so 

 closely that correction became difficult. The fair copy was 

 then corrected, and was recopied before being sent to the 

 printers. The copying was done by Mr. E. Norman, who 

 began this work many years ago when village schoolmaster at 

 Down. My father became so used to Mr. Norman's hand- 

 writing, that he could not correct manuscript, even when 

 clearly written out by one of his children, until it had been 

 recopied by Mr. Norman. The MS., on returning from Mr. 

 Norman, was once more corrected, and then sent off to the 

 printers. Then came the work of revising and correcting the 

 proofs, which my father found especially wearisome. 



It was at this stage that he first seriously considered the 

 style of what he had written. When this was going on he 

 usually started some other piece of work as a relief. The 

 correction of slips consisted in fact of two processes, for the 

 corrections were first written in pencil, and then re-considered 

 and written in ink. 



When the book was passing through the "slip" stage he 

 was glad to have corrections and suggestions from others. 

 Thus my mother looked over the proofs of the 'Origin.' In 

 some of the later works my sister, Mrs. Litchfield, did much 



