But I
found that I wanted a stock of words, or 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 search 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 in the 'Spectator,' 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 collection 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 complete the subject. This was
to teach me method in the arrangement of the thoughts. By comparing my
work with the original, I discovered many faults, and corrected them;
but I sometimes had the pleasure to fancy that, in certain particulars
of small consequence, I had been fortunate enough to improve the
method or the language, and this encouraged me to think that I might
in time come to be a tolerable English writer; of which I was
extremely ambitious. The time I allotted for writing exercises, and
for reading, was at night, or before work began in the morning, or on
Sundays, when I contrived to be in the printing house, avoiding as
much as I could the constant attendance at public worship, which my
father used to exact of me when I was under his care, and which I
still continued to consider a duty, though I could not afford time to
practise it.
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