ation. Mather's Magnalia might
do, but the binding does not please me; Cureton's Corpus Ignatianum
might also do if it were not too thin. I do not like taking
Norton's Genuineness of the Gospels, as it is just possible someone
may be wanting to know whether the Gospels are genuine or not, and
be unable to find out because I have got Mr. Norton's book.
Baxter's Church History of England, Lingard's Anglo-Saxon Church,
and Cardwell's Documentary Annals, though none of them as good as
Frost, are works of considerable merit; but on the whole I think
Arvine's Cyclopedia of Moral and Religious Anecdote is perhaps the
one book in the room which comes within measurable distance of
Frost. I should probably try this book first, but it has a fatal
objection in its too seductive title. "I am not curious," as Miss
Lottie Venne says in one of her parts, "but I like to know," and I
might be tempted to pervert the book from its natural uses and open
it, so as to find out what kind of a thing a moral and religious
anecdote is. I know, of course, that there are a great many
anecdotes in the Bible, but no one thinks of calling them either
moral or religious, though some of them certainly seem as if they
might fairly find a place in Mr. Arvine's work. There are some
things, however, which it is better not to know, and take it all
round I do not think I should be wise in putting myself in the way
of temptation, and adopting Arvine as the successor to my beloved
and lamented Frost.

Some successor I must find, or I must give up writing altogether,
and this I should be sorry to do. I have only as yet written about
a third, or from that--counting works written but not published--to
a half of the books which I have set myself to write. It would not
so much matter if old age was not staring me in the face. Dr. Parr
said it was "a beastly shame for an old man not to have laid down a
good cellar of port in his youth"; I, like the greater number, I
suppose, of those who write books at all, write in order that I may
have something to read in my old age when I can write no longer. I
know what I shall like better than anyone can tell me, and write
accordingly; if my career is nipped in the bud, as seems only too
likely, I really do not know where else I can turn for present
agreeable occupation, nor yet how to make suitable provision for my
later years. Other writers can, of course, make excellent provision
for their own old ages, but they