thought the writing
excellent, and wished, if possible, to imitate it. With this view I
took some of the papers, and, making short hints of the sentiment in
each sentence, laid them by a few days, and then, without looking at
the book, try'd to compleat the papers again, by expressing each
hinted sentiment at length, and as fully as it had been expressed
before, in any suitable words that should come to hand. Then I
compared my _Spectator_ with the original, discovered some of my
faults, and corrected them. But I found I wanted a stock of words, or
a readiness in recollecting and using them, which I thought I should
have acquired before that time if I had gone on making verses; since
the continual occasion for words of the same import, but of different
length, to suit the measure, or of different sound for the rhyme,
would have laid me under a constant necessity of searching for
variety, and also have tended to fix that variety in my mind, and make
me master of it. Therefore I took some of the tales and turned them
into verse; and, after a time, when I had pretty well forgotten the
prose, turned them back again. I also sometimes jumbled my collections
of hints into confusion, and after some weeks endeavored to reduce
them into the best order, before I began to form the full sentences
and compleat the paper. This was to teach me method in the arrangement
of thoughts. By comparing my work afterwards with the original, I
discovered many faults and amended them; but I sometimes had the
pleasure of fancying that, in certain particulars of small import, I
had been lucky enough to improve the method of the language, and this
encouraged me to think I might possibly in time come to be a tolerable
English writer, of which I was extremely ambitious. My time for these
exercises and for reading was at night, after work or before it began
in the morning, or on Sundays, when I contrived to be in the
printing-house alone, evading as much as I could the common attendance
on public worship which my father used to exact of me when I was under
his care, and which indeed I still thought a duty, thought I could
not, as it seemed to me, afford time to practise it.

[18] A daily London journal, comprising satirical essays
on social subjects, published by Addison and Steele in
1711-1712. The _Spectator_ and its predecessor, the
_Tatler_ (1709), marked the beginning of periodical
literature.

When about 16 years of age I