fficulty of writing it is immense, my extreme desire
to be original sadly cramping the powers of my mind; my fastidiousness
being so great that I invariably reject whatever ideas I do not think to
be legitimately my own. But there is one circumstance to which I cannot
help alluding here, as it serves to show what miseries this love of
originality must needs bring upon an author. I am constantly discovering
that, however original I may wish to be, I am continually producing the
same things which other people say or write. Whenever, after producing
something which gives me perfect satisfaction, and which has cost me
perhaps days and nights of brooding, I chance to take up a book for the
sake of a little relaxation, a book which I never saw before, I am sure
to find in it something more or less resembling some part of what I have
been just composing. You will easily conceive the distress which then
comes over me; 'tis then that I am almost tempted to execrate the chance
which, by discovering my latent powers, induced me to adopt a profession
of such anxiety and misery.

"For some time past I have given up reading almost entirely, owing to the
dread which I entertain of lighting upon something similar to what I
myself have written. I scarcely ever transgress without having almost
instant reason to repent. To-day, when I took up the newspaper, I saw in
a speech of the Duke of Rhododendron, at an agricultural dinner, the very
same ideas, and almost the same expressions which I had put into the
mouth of an imaginary personage of mine, on a widely different occasion;
you saw how I dashed the newspaper down--you saw how I touched the floor;
the touch was to baffle the evil chance, to prevent the critics detecting
any similarity between the speech of the Duke of Rhododendron at the
agricultural dinner, and the speech of my personage. My sensibility on
the subject of my writings is so great, that sometimes a chance word is
sufficient to unman me, I apply it to them in a superstitious sense; for
example, when you said some time ago that the dark hour was coming on, I
applied it to my works--it appeared to bode them evil fortune; you saw
how I touched, it was to baffle the evil chance; but I do not confine
myself to touching when the fear of the evil chance is upon me. To
baffle it I occasionally perform actions which must appear highly
incomprehensible; I have been known, when riding in company with other
people, to leave th