ained a
somewhat dreary reputation. But Wordsworth, with his tiny bookshelf of
odd tattered volumes, with pages of manuscript interleaved to supply
missing passages, alone kept his heart and imagination active, by
deliberate leisure, elaborate sauntering, unashamed idleness.

The reason why very few uneducated persons have been writers of note,
is because they have been unable to take up the problem at the right
point. A writer cannot start absolutely afresh; he must have the
progress of thought behind him, and he must join the procession in due
order. Therefore the best outfit for a writer is to have just enough
cultivation to enable him to apprehend the drift and development of
thought, to discern the social and emotional problems that are in the
air, so that he can interpret--that is the secret--the thoughts that
are astir, but which have not yet been brought to the birth. He must
know enough and not too much; he must not dim his perception by
acquainting himself in detail with what has been said or thought; he
must not take off the freshness of his mind by too much intellectual
gymnastic. It is a race across country for which he is preparing, and
he will learn better what the practical difficulties are by daring
excursions of his own, than by acquiring a formal suppleness in
prescribed exercises.

The originality and the output of the writer are conditioned by his
intellectual and vital energy. Most men require all their energy for
the ordinary pursuits of life; all creative work is the result of a
certain superabundance of mental force. If this force is used up in
social duties, in professional business, even in the pursuit of a high
degree of mental cultivation, originality must suffer; and therefore a
man whose aim is to write, ought resolutely to limit his activities.
What would be idleness in another is for him a storing of forces; what
in an ordinary man would be malingering and procrastination, is for the
writer the repose necessary to allow his energies to concentrate
themselves upon his chosen work.

June 8, 1889.

I have been looking at a catalogue, this morning, of the publications
of a firm that is always bringing out new editions of old writers. I
suppose they find a certain sale for these books, or they would not
issue them; and yet I cannot conceive who buys them in their thousands,
and still less who reads them. Teachers, perhaps, of literature; or
people who are inspired by local lectures t