Farewell, No More Of This; His Declining Days Shall Be
Spent In Peace.
A few months afterwards a work is announced in Leipsic
which 'really trenches on my favourite subject, and really
After spending
a lifetime I can't stand it.' By this time his handwriting has become so
shaky he can hardly read it himself, so he sends in despair for a lady
who works a type-writer, and with infinite patience she makes a clean
manuscript of the muddled mass. To the press at last, and the proofs come
rapidly. Such a relief! How joyfully easy a thing is when you set about
it! but by-and-by this won't do. Sub-section A ought to be in a
foot-note, family B is doubtful; and so the corrections grow and run over
the margin in a thin treble hand, till they approach the bulk of the
original book - a good profit for the printer; and so after about forty
years the monograph is published - the work of a life is accomplished.
Fifty copies are sent round to as many public libraries and learned
societies, and the rest of the impression lies on the shelves till dust
and time and spiders' webs have buried it. Splendid work in it too.
Looked back upon from to-day with the key of modern thought, these
monographs often contain a whole chest of treasure. And still there are
the periodicals, a century of magazines and journals and reviews and
notices that have been coming out these hundred years and dropping to the
ground like dead leaves unnoticed.
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