"I sternly shut myself up, and come to close grips with the romance which I am trying to tear from my brain."
He was always discouraged about his work, and needed a deal of cheering regarding it. He says in one place:
"My own individual taste is for an altogether different class of books from what I write. If I were to meet with such books as mine by another writer, I do not believe I should be able to get through with them."
And again:—
"I will try to write a more genial book, but the Devil himself always gets into my inkstand, and I can only get him out by penfuls."
Still again:—
"Heaven sees fit to visit me with the unshakable conviction that all this series of articles is good for nothing. I don't think that the public will bear with much more of this sort of thing."
His letters are often full of this moody discouragement, though lighted up always by some gleams of his humor. For instance, he writes to Fields:—
"Do make some inquiries about Portugal,—in what part of the world it lies, and whether it is a Kingdom, an Empire, or a Republic. Also the expenses of living there, and whether the Minister would be much pestered with his own countrymen."
And later, when he was in Rome:—