I saw the justice of his remarks, and thence grew more attentive to the
manner in writing, and determined to endeavor an improvement.
"About this time I met with an odd volume of the _Spectator_.
It was the third. I had never before seen any of them. I bought it,
read it over and over, and was much delighted with it. I thought the
writing excellent, and wished it possible to imitate it. With this view
I took some of the papers, and making short hints of the sentiments in
each sentence, laid them by a few days, and then, without looking at the
book, tried to complete the papers again, by expressing each hinted
sentiment at length, and as fully as it had been expressed before,
in any suitable words that should come to hand. Then I compared my
_Spectator_ with the original, discovered some of my faults, and
corrected them. But I found I wanted a stock of words, or a 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 continued
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 mind, and make me master of it.
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