g with
better grace; but I, like Sir Andrew Aguecheek, do it more
natural.[362] They have to read old books and consult antiquarian
collections to get their knowledge; I write because I have long since
read such works, and possess, thanks to a strong memory, the information
which they have to seek for. This leads to a dragging-in historical
details by head and shoulders, so that the interest of the main piece is
lost in minute descriptions of events which do not affect its progress.
Perhaps I have sinned in this way myself; indeed, I am but too conscious
of having considered the plot only as what Bayes[363] calls the means of
bringing in fine things; so that in respect to the descriptions, it
resembled the string of the showman's box, which he pulls to show in
succession Kings, Queens, the Battle of Waterloo, Bonaparte at Saint
Helena, Newmarket Races, and White-headed Bob floored by Jemmy from
town. All this I may have done, but I have repented of it; and in my
better efforts, while I conducted my story through the agency of
historical personages, and by connecting it with historical incidents, I
have endeavoured to weave them pretty closely together, and in future I
will study this more. Must not let the background eclipse the principal
figures--the frame overpower the picture.

Another thing in my favour is, that my contemporaries steal too openly.
Mr. Smith has inserted in _Brambletye House_ whole pages from Defoe's
_Fire and Plague of London_.

"Steal! foh! a fico for the phrase--
Convey, the wise it call!"[364]

When I _convey_ an incident or so, I am at as much pains to avoid
detection as if the offence could be indicted in literal fact at the Old
Bailey.

But leaving this, hard pressed as I am by these imitators, who must put
the thing out of fashion at last, I consider, like a fox at his last
shifts, whether there be a way to dodge them, some new device to throw
them off, and have a mile or two of free ground, while I have legs and
wind left to use it. There is one way to give novelty: to depend for
success on the interest of a well-contrived story. But woe's me! that
requires thought, consideration--the writing out a regular plan or
plot--above all the adhering to one--which I never can do, for the ideas
rise as I write, and bear such a disproportioned extent to that which
each occupied at the first concoction, that (cocksnowns!) I shall never
be able to take the trouble; and yet to make the world