60 AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [Ch. II. 



before writing them down ; but for several years I have found 

 that it saves time to scribble in a vile hand, whole pages as 

 quickly as I possibly can, contracting half the words; and 

 then correct deliberately. Sentences thus scribbled down are 

 often better ones than I could have written deliberately. 



Having said thus much about my manner of writing, I will 

 add that with my large books I spend a good deal of timo 

 over the general arrangement of the matter. I first make the 

 rudest outline in two or three pages, and then a larger one 

 in several pages, a few words or one word standing for a 

 whole discussion or series of facts. Each one of these headings 

 is again enlarged and often transferred before I begin to write 

 in extenso. As in several of my books facts observed by 

 others have been very extensively used, and as I have always 

 had several quite distinct subjects in hand at the same time, 

 I may mention that I keep from thirty to forty large port- 

 folios, in cabinets with labelled shelves, into which I can at 

 once put a detached reference or memorandum. I have bought 

 many books, and at their ends I make an index of all the 

 facts that concern my work ; or, if the book is not my own, 

 write out a separate abstract, and of such abstracts I havo 

 a large drawer full. Before beginning on any subject I look 

 to all the short indexes and make a general and classified 

 index, and by taking the one or more proper portfolios I have 

 all the information collected during my life ready for use. 



I have said that in one respect my mind has changed during 

 the last twenty or thirty years. Up to the age of thirty, or 

 beyond it, poetry of many kinds, such as the works of Milton, 

 Gray, Byron, Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Shelley, gave mo 

 great pleasure, and even as a schoolboy I took intense delight 

 in Shakespeare, especially in the historical plays. I have also 

 said that formerly pictures gave me considerable, and music 

 very great delight. But now for many years I cannot endure 

 to read a line of poetry : I have tried lately to read Shake- 

 speare, and found it so intolerably dull that it nauseated me. 

 I have also almost lost my taste for pictures or music. Music 

 generally sets me thinking too energetically on what I havo 

 been at work on, instead of giving me pleasure. I retain 

 some taste for fine scenery, but it does not cause me the 

 exquisite delight which it formerly did. On the other hand, 

 novels, which are works of the imagination, though not of 

 a very high order, have been for years a wonderful relief and 

 pleasure to me, and I often bless all novelists. A surprising 

 number have been read aloud to me, and I like all if mode- 

 rately good, and if they do not end unhappily — against which 



