thing to death! How coldly did this very book
go on for months, until it forced itself up in people's opinion, without
forcing itself up in sale! If I wrote for forty thousand Forsters, or
for forty thousand people who know I write because I can't help it, I
should have no need to leave the scene. But this very book warns me that
if I _can_ leave it for a time, I had better do so, and must do so.
Apart from that again, I feel that longer rest after this story would do
me good. You say two or three months, because you have been used to see
me for eight years never leaving off. But it is not rest enough. It is
impossible to go on working the brain to that extent for ever. The very
spirit of the thing, in doing it, leaves a horrible despondency behind,
when it is done; which must be prejudicial to the mind, so soon renewed,
and so seldom let alone. What would poor Scott have given to have gone
abroad, of his own free will, a young man, instead of creeping there, a
driveller, in his miserable decay! I said myself in my note to
you--anticipating what you put to me--that it was a question _what_ I
should come out with, first. The travel-book, if to be done at all,
would cost me very little trouble; and surely would go very far to pay
charges, whenever published. We have spoken of the baby, and of leaving
it here with Catherine's mother. Moving the children into France could
not, in any ordinary course of things, do them anything but good. And
the question is, what it would do to that by which they live: not what
it would do to them.--I had forgotten that point in the B. and E.
negociation; but they certainly suggested instant publication of the
reprints, or at all events of some of them; by which of course I know,
and as you point out, I could provide of myself what is wanted. I take
that as putting the thing distinctly as a matter of trade, and feeling
it so. And, as a matter of trade with them or anybody else, as a matter
of trade between me and the public, should I not be better off a year
hence, with the reputation of having seen so much in the meantime? The
reason which induces you to look upon this scheme with dislike--separation
for so long a time--surely has equal weight with me. I see very little
pleasure in it, beyond the natural desire to have been in those great
scenes; I anticipate no enjoyment at the time. I have come to look upon
it as a matter of policy and duty. I have a thousand other reasons, but
shall very s