LITERARY AND DOMESTIC LIFE. 



399 



" The boy was told to call this morning at seven, and said he 

 would, but he has not come till .... I rose at five this morning 

 on purpose to have the sheets ready. I wish you could order the 

 devils to be more punctual, as they never by any accident appear 

 in this house at a proper time. The devil who broke his word is 

 he who brought the first packet last night. The devil who brought 

 the second, is in this blameless. I do not wish the first devil to get 

 more than his due : but you must snub him for my sake. For a 

 man who goes to bed at two, does not relish leaving it at five, ex- 

 cept in case of life or death. Would you believe it, I am a little 

 angry just now ? J- W." 



I do not exaggerate his power of speed, when I say he wrote 

 more in a few hours than most able writers do in a few days ; ex- 

 amples of it I have often seen in the very manuscript before him, 

 which, disposed on the table, was soon transferred to the more 

 roomy space of the floor at his feet, where it lay " thick as autum- 

 nal leaves in Vallombrosa," only to be piled up again quickly as 

 before. When I look back to the days when he sat in that con- 

 fused, dusty study, working sometimes like a slave, it seems to me 

 as if Hood's " Song of the Shirt," with a difference of burden, would 

 apply in its touching words to him ; for it was 



"Write, -write, -write, 

 While the cock is crowing aloof; 



And write, write, write, 

 Till the stars shine through the roof;" 



And so was his literature made, that delightful periodical literature 

 which, " say of it what you will, gives light to the heads and heat 

 to the hearts of millions of our race. The greatest and best men of 

 the age have not disdained to belong to the Brotherhood; and thus 

 the hovel holds what must not be missing in the hall — the furniture 

 of the cot is the same as that of the palace ; and duke and ditcher 

 read their lessons from the same page." 



He never, even in very cold weather, had a fire in his room ; noi 

 did it at night, as most apartments do, get heat from gas, which he 

 particularly disliked, remaining faithful to the primitive candle — a 

 large vulgar tallow, set in a suitable candlestick composed of ordi- 

 nary tin, and made after the fashion of what is called a kitchen can- 



