There was a certain doggedness in his character that might have made him a useful citizen but for that unfortunate hereditary spoon, and he wrote “Chapter I.” at the head of a new sheet of quarto paper long before the library fire had reached the heart of his first luckless manuscript.  This time he wrote more slowly, and with a waning confidence that failed him altogether when he was about half-way through.  Reading the fragment dispassionately he thought there were good pages in it, but, taken as a whole, it was unequal, and moved forward only by fits and starts.  He began again with his late manuscript spread about him on the table for reference.  At the fifth attempt he succeeded in writing a whole novel.

In the course of his struggles he had acquired a philosophy of composition.  Especially he had learned to shun those enchanted hours when the labour of creation became suspiciously easy, for he had found by experience that the work he did in these moments of inspiration was either bad in itself or out of key with the preceding chapters.  He thought that inspiration might be useful to poets or writers of short stories, but personally as a novelist he found it a nuisance.  By dint of hard work, however, he succeeded in eliminating its evil influence from his final draft.  He told himself that he had no illusions as to the merits of his book.  He knew he was not a man of genius, but he knew also that the grammar and the punctuation of his novel were far above the average of such works, and although he could not read Sir Thomas Browne or Walter Pater with pleasure, he felt sure that his book was written in a straightforward and gentlemanly style.  He was prepared to be told that his use of the colon was audacious, and looked forward with pleasure to an agreeable controversy on the question.

He read his book to his friends, who made suggestions that would have involved its rewriting from one end to the other.  He read it to his enemies, who told him that it was nearly good enough to publish; he read it to his wife, who said that it was very nice, and that it was time to dress for dinner.  No one seemed to realise that it was the most important thing he had ever done in his life.  This quickened his eagerness to get it published—­an eagerness only tempered by a very real fear of those knowing dogs, the critics.  He could not forget that he had criticised a good many books himself in terms that would have made the authors abandon their profession if they had but heard his strictures; and he had read notices in the papers that would have made him droop with shame if they had referred to any work of his.  When these sombre thoughts came to him he would pick up his book and read it again, and in common fairness he had to admit to himself that he found it uncommonly good.

One day, after a whole batch of ungrammatical novels had reached him from the library, he posted his manuscript to his favourite publisher.  He had heard stories of masterpieces many times rejected, so he did not tell his wife what he had done.