But I have strayed away from the subject of habits; and the moral of the above is only that habits are easy enough if you like the task enough.  If I did not care for writing, I should find abundance of excellent reasons why I should not do it.

Pater says somewhere that forming habits is failure in life; by which I suppose he means that if one gets tied down to a petty routine of one’s own, it generally ends in one’s becoming petty too—­narrow-minded and conventional.  I don’t suppose he referred to method, because he was one of the most methodical of men.  He wrote down sentences that came into his mind, scattered ideas, on small cards; when he had a sufficient store of these, he sorted them and built up his essay out of them.

But I am equally aware that habit is apt to become very tyrannical indeed, if it is acquired.  In my own case I have got into the habit of writing only between tea and dinner, owing to its being the only time at my disposal, so that I can hardly write at any other time; and that is inconvenient in the holidays.  Moreover, I like writing so much, enjoy the shaping of sentences so intensely, that I tend to arrange my day in the holidays entirely with a view to having these particular hours free for writing; and thus for a great part of the year I lose the best and most enjoyable part of the day, the sweet summer evenings, when the tired world grows fragrant and cool.

One ought to have a routine for home life certainly; but it is not wholesome when one begins to grudge the slightest variation from the programme.  I speak philosophically, because I am in the grip of the evil myself.  The reason why I care so little for staying anywhere, and even for travelling, is because it disarranges my plan of the day, and I don’t feel certain of being able to secure the time for writing which I love.  But this is wrong; it is vivendi perdere causas, and I think we ought resolutely to court a difference of life at intervals, and to learn to bear with equanimity the suspension of one’s daily habits.  You are certainly wise, if you find it suits you, to secure the morning for writing.  Personally my mind is not at its best then; it is dulled and weakened by sleep, and it requires the tonic of routine work and bodily exercise before it expands and flourishes.

Another grievous tendency which grows on me is an incapacity for idleness.  That will amuse you, when you remember the long evenings at Eton which we used to spend in vacant talk.  I remember so well your saying after tea one evening, in that poky room of yours with the barred windows at the end of the upper passage, “How delightful to think that there are four hours with nothing whatever to do!” Do you remember, too, that night when we sate at tea, blissfully, wholesomely tired after a college match?  John and Ellen, those strange, gruff beings, came in to wash up, carrying that horrible, steaming can of tea-dregs in which our cups were plunged: