should appear a page or two
before, or after, and in this I think myself right; but in wanting
them all in the same period, as I instinctively did,--and do, for
nature is obstinate,--I have imposed on myself needless labor, and
have often taxed attention as an author has no right to do. Unless
under pressing necessity, I myself will not be at pains to read what I
can with difficulty understand.

It is to this anxiety for full and accurate development of statements
and ideas that I chiefly attribute a diffuseness with which my
writing has been reproached; I have no doubt justly. I have not,
however, tried to check the evil at the root. I am built that way, and
think that way; all round a subject, as far as I can see it. I am
uneasy if a presentment err by defect, by excess, or by obscurity
apparent to myself. I must get the whole in; and for due emphasis am
very probably redundant. I am not willing to attempt seriously
modifying my natural style, the reflection of myself, lest, while
digging up the tares of prolixity I root up also the wheat of
precision. The difference emphasized by Dr. Johnson, "between notions
borrowed from without and notions generated within," seems to me to
apply to the mode of expression as well as to the idea expressed. The
two spring from the same source, and correspond. You impress more
forcibly by retaining your native manner of statement; chastened where
necessary, but not defaced by an imitation, even of a self-erected,
yet artificial, standard. It does not do to meddle too much with
yourself. But I do resort to a weeding process in revising; a verb or
an adjective, an expletive or a superlative, is dragged out and cast
away. Even so, as often as not, I have to add. The words above, "as
far as I can see it," have just been put in. Of course, in the
interest of readers, I resort to breaking up sentences; but to me
personally the result is usually distasteful. The reader takes hold
more easily, as a child learns spelling by division into syllables;
but I am conscious that instead of my thoughts constituting a group
mutually related, and so reproducing the essential me, they are
disjointed and must be reassembled by others.

A man untrained in youth, and who has never systematically sought to
repair the defect, can scarcely hope fully to compass technique in
style. He will thus lose some part of that which he may gain by being
more nearly his natural self; for there is a real gain in this. Su