On the fourth day the sun shone brightly—­I arose, and, having breakfasted as usual, I fell to work.  My brain was this day wonderfully prolific, and my pen never before or since glided so rapidly over the paper; towards night I began to feel strangely about the back part of my head, and my whole system was extraordinarily affected.  I likewise occasionally saw double—­a tempter now seemed to be at work within me.

‘You had better leave off now for a short space,’ said the tempter, ’and go out and drink a pint of beer; you have still one shilling left—­if you go on at this rate, you will go mad—­go out and spend sixpence, you can afford it, more than half your work is done.’  I was about to obey the suggestion of the tempter, when the idea struck me that, if I did not complete the work whilst the fit was on me, I should never complete it; so I held on.  I am almost afraid to state how many pages I wrote that day of the life of Joseph Sell.

From this time I proceeded in a somewhat more leisurely manner; but, as I drew nearer and nearer to the completion of my task, dreadful fears and despondencies came over me.—­It will be too late, thought I; by the time I have finished the work, the bookseller will have been supplied with a tale or a novel.  Is it probable that, in a town like this, where talent is so abundant—­hungry talent too—­a bookseller can advertise for a tale or a novel, without being supplied with half a dozen in twenty-four hours?  I may as well fling down my pen—­I am writing to no purpose.  And these thoughts came over my mind so often, that at last, in utter despair, I flung down the pen.  Whereupon the tempter within me said—­’And, now you have flung down the pen, you may as well fling yourself out of the window; what remains for you to do?’ Why, to take it up again, thought I to myself, for I did not like the latter suggestion at all—­and then forthwith I resumed the pen, and wrote with greater vigour than before, from about six o’clock in the evening until I could hardly see, when I rested for a while, when the tempter within me again said, or appeared to say—­’All you have been writing is stuff, it will never do—­a drug—­a mere drug’; and methought these last words were uttered in the gruff tones of the big publisher.  ’A thing merely to be sneezed at,’ a voice like that of Taggart added; and then I seemed to hear a sternutation,—­as I probably did, for, recovering from a kind of swoon, I found myself shivering with cold.  The next day I brought my work to a conclusion.

But the task of revision still remained; for an hour or two I shrank from it, and remained gazing stupidly at the pile of paper which I had written over.  I was all but exhausted, and I dreaded, on inspecting the sheets, to find them full of absurdities which I had paid no regard to in the furor of composition.  But the task, however trying to my nerves, must be got over; at last, in a kind of desperation, I entered upon it.  It was far from an easy one; there were, however, fewer errors and absurdities than I had anticipated.  About twelve o’clock at night I had got over the task of revision.  ‘To-morrow for the bookseller,’ said I, as my head sank on the pillow.  ‘Oh me!’