may add that the book which
helped him most was the _Life of Arnold_. "I respect and reverence his
memory," he wrote to me in the middle of October, in reply to my mention
of what had most attracted myself in it, "beyond all expression. I must
have that book. Every sentence that you quote from it is the text-book
of my faith."

He kept his promise that I should hear from him while writing, and I had
frequent letters when he was fairly in his work. "With my steam very
much up, I find it a great trial to be so far off from you, and
consequently to have no one (always excepting Kate and Georgy) to whom
to expatiate on my day's work. And I want a crowded street to plunge
into at night. And I want to be 'on the spot' as it were. But apart from
such things, the life I lead is favourable to work." In his next letter:
"I am in regular, ferocious excitement with the _Chimes_; get up at
seven; have a cold bath before breakfast; and blaze away, wrathful and
red-hot, until three o'clock or so; when I usually knock off (unless it
rains) for the day . . . I am fierce to finish in a spirit bearing some
affinity to those of truth and mercy, and to shame the cruel and the
canting. I have not forgotten my catechism. 'Yes verily, and with God's
help, so I will!'"

Within a week he had completed his first part, or quarter. "I send you
to-day" (18th of October), "by mail, the first and longest of the four
divisions. This is great for the first week, which is usually up-hill. I
have kept a copy in shorthand in case of accidents. I hope to send you a
parcel every Monday until the whole is done. I do not wish to influence
you, but it has a great hold upon me, and has affected me, in the doing,
in divers strong ways, deeply, forcibly. To give you better means of
judgment I will sketch for you the general idea, but pray don't read it
until you have read this first part of the MS." I print it here. It is a
good illustration of his method in all his writing. His idea is in it so
thoroughly, that, by comparison with the tale as printed, we see the
strength of its mastery over his first design. Thus always, whether his
tale was to be written in one or in twenty numbers, his fancies
controlled him. He never, in any of his books, accomplished what he had
wholly preconceived, often as he attempted it. Few men of genius ever
did. Once at the sacred heat that opens regions beyond ordinary vision,
imagination has its own laws; and where characters are so