THE GOSPEL OF INFINITE PAINS
Contemporains, are such an interesting object lesson of the extent to which the fever for revision may be carried that it seems worth while to quote him here rather extensively:
His method of proceeding was as follows: When he had long borne and lived a subject, he wrote, in a rapid, uneven, blotted, almost hieroglyphic writing, a species of outline on several pages. These pages went to the printing office, from which they were returned in placards, that is to say, in detached columns in the centre of large sheets. He read these proofs attentively, for they already gave to his embryo work that impersonal character which manuscript never possesses; and he applied to this first sketch the great critical faculty with which he was gifted, precisely as though he were judging of another man's work.
Then he began operations: approving or disapproving, he maintained or corrected, but above all he added.… After some hours, the
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