Here first you
see it blocked out rather roughly, and much blotted with erasures
and substitutions. Here next you see the result copied--clean to
begin with, but afterwards scored and scored. You see the words I
chose instead of the first, and afterwards in their turn rejected,
until in the proofs I reached those which I have as yet let stand. I
do not fancy Miss Graeme has any doubt the verses are mine, for it
was plain she thought them rubbish. From your pains to know who
wrote them, I believe you do not think so badly of them!"
She thought he was satirical, and gave a slight sigh as of pain. It
went to his heart.
"I did not mean the smallest reflection, my lady, on your desire for
satisfaction," he said; "rather, indeed, it flatters me. But is it
not strange the heart should be less ready to believe what seems
worth believing? Something must be true: why not the worthy--oftener
at least than the unworthy? Why should it be easier to believe hard
things of God, for instance, than lovely things?--or that one man
copied from another, than that he should have made the thing
himself? Some would yet say I contrived all this semblance of
composition in order to lay the surer claim to that to which I had
none--nor would take the trouble to follow the thing through its
development! But it will be easy for you, my lady, and no bad
exercise in logic and analysis, to determine whether the genuine
growth of the poem be before you in these papers or not.
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