154 REMINISCENCES. 



of the correction. After my sister's marriage perhaps most 

 of the work fell to my share. 



My sister, Mrs. Litchfield, writes : 



" This work was very interesting in itself, and it was inex- 

 pressibly exhilarating to work for him. He was always so 

 ready to be convinced that any suggested alteration was an 

 improvement, and so full of gratitude for the trouble taken. 

 I do not think that he ever used to forget to tell me what im- 

 provement he thought I had made, and he used almost to 

 excuse himself if he did not agree with any correction. I 

 think I felt the singular modesty and graciousness of his 

 nature through thus working for him in a way I never should 

 otherwise have done. 



" He did not write with ease, and was apt to invert his 

 sentences both in writing and speaking, putting the qualifying 

 clause before it was clear what it was to qualify. He corrected 

 a great deal, and was eager to express himself as well as he 

 possibly could." 



Perhaps the commonest corrections needed were of obscur- 

 ities due to the omission of a necessary link in the reasoning 

 something which he had evidently omitted through familiarity 

 with the subject. Not that there was any fault in the sequence 

 of the thoughts, but that from familiarity with his argument 

 he did not notice when the words failed to reproduce his 

 thought. He also frequently put too much matter into one 

 sentence, so that it had to be cut up into two. 



On the whole, I think the pains which my father took over 

 the literary part of the work was very remarkable. He often 

 laughed or grumbled at himself for the difficulty which he 

 found in writing English, saying, for instance, that if a bad 

 arrangement of a sentence was possible, he should be sure to 

 adopt it. He once got much amusement and satisfaction out 

 of the difficulty which one of the family found in writing a 

 short circular. He had the pleasure of correcting and laughing 



