I had no time, besides, to concentrate my thoughts sufficiently for poetry;
no time to wait for inspiration. From the moment I had swallowed my
breakfast, I had to sit scribbling off my thoughts anyhow in prose; and
soon my own scanty stock was exhausted, and I was forced to beg, borrow,
and steal notions and facts wherever I could get them. Oh! the misery of
having to read not what I longed to know, but what I thought would pay!
to skip page after page of interesting matter, just to pick out a single
thought or sentence which could be stitched into my patchwork! and then
the still greater misery of seeing the article which I had sent to press
a tolerably healthy and lusty bantling, appear in print next week after
suffering the inquisition tortures of the editorial censorship, all maimed,
and squinting, and one-sided, with the colour rubbed off its poor cheeks,
and generally a villanous hang-dog look of ferocity, so different from its
birth-smile that I often did not know my own child again!--and then, when I
dared to remonstrate, however feebly, to be told, by way of comfort, that
the public taste must be consulted! It gave me a hopeful notion of the said
taste, certainly; and often and often I groaned in spirit over the temper
of my own class, which not only submitted to, but demanded such one-sided
bigotry, prurience, and ferocity, from those who set up as its guides and
teachers.
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