ssurance of success, almost with the hope of formidable difficulties
to be overcome. He had long busied himself with those curious researches
which Poe had indicated in the _Philosophy of Composition_, and many
hours had been spent in analyzing the singular effects which may be
produced by the sound and resonance of words. But he had been struck by
the thought that in the finest literature there were more subtle tones
than the loud and insistent music of "never more," and he endeavored to
find the secret of those pages and sentences which spoke, less directly,
and less obviously, to the soul rather than to the ear, being filled with
a certain grave melody and the sensation of singing voices. It was
admirable, no doubt, to write phrases that showed at a glance their
designed rhythm, and rang with sonorous words, but he dreamed of a prose
in which the music should be less explicit, of names rather than notes.
He was astonished that morning at his own fortune and facility; he
succeeded in covering a page of ruled paper wholly to his satisfaction,
and the sentences, when he read them out, appeared to suggest a weird
elusive chanting, exquisite but almost imperceptible, like the echo of
the plainsong reverberated from the vault of a monastic church.

He thought that such happy mornings well repaid him for the anguish of
depression which he sometimes had to suffer, and for the strange
experience of "possession" recurring at rare intervals, and usually after
many weeks of severe diet. His income, he found, amounted to sixty-five
pounds a year, and he lived for weeks at a time on fifteen shillings a
week. During these austere periods his only food was bread, at the rate
of a loaf a day; but he drank huge draughts of green tea, and smoked a
black tobacco, which seemed to him a more potent mother of thought than
any drug from the scented East. "I hope you go to some nice place for
dinner," wrote his cousin; "there used to be some excellent eating-houses
in London where one could get a good cut from the joint, _with plenty of
gravy_, and a boiled potato, for a shilling. Aunt Mary writes that you
should try Mr. Jones's in Water Street, Islington, whose father came from
near Caermaen, and was always most comfortable in her day. I daresay the
walk there would do you good. It is such a pity you smoke that horrid
tobacco. I had a letter from Mrs. Dolly (Jane Diggs, who married your
cousin John Dolly) the other day, and she said they woul