sibly two--on
Tuesday, two hours on Thursday, one on Friday, two on Saturday, and one
or two on Sunday--nine hours a week under favourable circumstances, and
never a moment more. But writing being to me the purest pleasure and
refreshment, I never lose a minute in getting to work, and I use every
moment of the time. That does not include reading; but by dint of
having books about, and by working carefully, so that I do not need to
go over the same ground twice, I get through a good deal in the week. I
have trained myself, too, to be able to write at full speed when I am
at work, and I can count on writing three octavo pages in an hour, or
even four. The result is, as you will see, that in a term of twelve
weeks, I can turn out between three and four hundred pages. The curious
thing is that I do better original work in the term-time than in the
holidays. I think the pressure of a good deal of mechanical work, not
of an exhausting kind, clears the brain and makes it vigorous. Of
course it is rather scrappy work; but I lay my plans in the holidays,
make my skeleton, and work up my authorities; and so I can go ahead at
full steam.

But I have strayed away from the subject of habits; and the moral of
the above is only that habits are easy enough if you like the task
enough. If I did not care for writing, I should find abundance of
excellent reasons why I should not do it.

Pater says somewhere that forming habits is failure in life; by which I
suppose he means that if one gets tied down to a petty routine of one's
own, it generally ends in one's becoming petty too--narrow-minded and
conventional. I don't suppose he referred to method, because he was one
of the most methodical of men. He wrote down sentences that came into
his mind, scattered ideas, on small cards; when he had a sufficient
store of these, he sorted them and built up his essay out of them.

But I am equally aware that habit is apt to become very tyrannical
indeed, if it is acquired. In my own case I have got into the habit of
writing only between tea and dinner, owing to its being the only time
at my disposal, so that I can hardly write at any other time; and that
is inconvenient in the holidays. Moreover, I like writing so much,
enjoy the shaping of sentences so intensely, that I tend to arrange my
day in the holidays entirely with a view to having these particular
hours free for writing; and thus for a great part of the year I lose
the best and most enjoy