THE GOSPEL OF INFINITE PAINS
pruned his page, covering it all over with pencil strokes. That was the way Flaubert worked. We all have manias of this sort, but with him it was this sort of mania from one end of his books to the other.
It is somewhat of a comfort to turn from a writer whose efforts were so vastly in excess of the bulk of his actual production and take up another novelist who holds a fairly eminent position in English literature and who, through long years of remarkable average fertility, succeeded in making the quality of his writing keep steady pace with the quantity—Anthony Trollope. His advice to young writers is not only interesting but valuable, provided it be taken understandingly. It has seemed worth while to quote from him rather often in these pages. Here is still another passage that is apropos:
Nulla dies sine linea. Let that be their motto.
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