STYLE. 129 



and put away. He felt the value of his notes, and had a 

 horror of their destruction by fire. I remember, when some 

 alarm of fire had happened, his begging me to be especially 

 careful, adding very earnestly, that the rest of his life would 

 be miserable if his notes and books were to be destroyed. 



He shows the same feeling in writing about the loss of a 

 manuscript, the purport of his words being, " I have a copy, 

 or the loss would have killed me." In writing a book he 

 would spend much time and labour in making a skeleton or 

 plan of the whole, and in enlarging and sub-classing each 

 heading, as described in his 'Recollections.' I think this 

 careful arrangement of the plan was not at all essential to the 

 building up of his argument, but for its presentment, and for 

 the arrangement of his facts. In his 'Life of Erasmus Darwin,* 

 as it was first printed in slips, the growth of the book from a 

 skeleton was plainly visible. The arrangement was altered 

 afterwards, because it was too formal and categorical, 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. 



