I saw the justice
of his remark, and thence grew more attentive to the manner in writing,
and determined to endeavor at improvement.
About this time I met with an odd volume of the Spectator.
It was the third. I had never before seen any of them. I bought it,
read it over and over, and was much delighted with it. I thought
the writing excellent, and wished, if possible, to imitate it.
With this view I took some of the papers, and, making short hints
of the sentiment in each sentence, laid them by a few days, and then,
without looking at the book, try'd to compleat the papers again,
by expressing each hinted sentiment at length, and as fully as it
had been expressed before, in any suitable words that should
come to hand. Then I compared my Spectator with the original,
discovered some of my faults, and corrected them. But I found I wanted
a stock of words, or a readiness in recollecting and using them,
which I thought I should have acquired before that time if I
had gone on making verses; since the continual occasion for words
of the same import, but of different length, to suit the measure,
or of different sound for the rhyme, would have laid me under a constant
necessity of searching for variety, and also have tended to fix
that variety in my mind, and make me master of it.
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