I therefore set to work, and after two and a half years of not inconsiderable labour I now have the privilege and the satisfaction of accompanying the early volumes of the series with this preface.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Every day, my daddy told me the same thing. 'Once a task is just begun, never leave it till it's done. Be the labour great or small, do it well or not at all.'
But I want to do good work, after this series.
Work is the order of the day, just as it was at one time, with our first starts and our best efforts. Do you remember? Therein lies its delight. It brings back the forgotten; one's stores of energy, seemingly exhausted, come back to life.
Without the faintest possibility of finding a job, I decided to devote myself to literature: it was about time to find out what I was worth as a writer.
Whatever success I may have attained is due to the fact that since I was old enough to work at all, my ambition has never deserted me.
Labour may be a burden and a chastisement, but it is also an honour and a glory. Without it, nothing can be accomplished.
Wake the power within thee slumbering, trim the plot that's in thy keeping, thou wilt bless the task when reaping sweet labour's prize.
My work is on the one hand laboured, and on the other completely happenstance and intuitive.
I'm a novelist, that's how I make my livelihood, and I concentrate on the novels.
In the summer of 1791, I gave up my concern in the 'New Annual Register,' the historical part of which I had written for seven years, and abdicated, I hope forever, the task of performing a literary labour, the nature of which should be dictated by anything but the promptings of my own mind.