By the end of the year he had nearly finished "Westward Ho!"--the most
popular of his novels, which the war had literally wrung out of him. He
writes--
? "_December 18, 1855_.
"I am getting more of a Government man every day. I don't see how they
could have done better in any matter, because I don't see but that _I_
should have done a thousand times worse in their place, and that is the
only fair standard.
"As for a ballad--oh! my dear lad, there is no use fiddling while Rome is
burning. I have nothing to sing about those glorious fellows, except 'God
save the Queen and them.' I tell you the whole thing stuns me, so I cannot
sit down to make fiddle rhyme with diddle about it--or blundered with
hundred like Alfred Tennyson. He is no Tyrtaeus, though he has a glimpse of
what Tyrtaeus ought to be. But I have not even that; and am going rabbit
shooting to-morrow instead. But every man has his calling, and my novel
is mine, because I am fit for nothing better. The book" ('Westward Ho!')
"will be out the middle or end of January, if the printers choose. It is
a sanguinary book, but perhaps containing doctrine profitable for these
times.
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