Book I. before my return to Oxford. It surprised me, though, that, for

all my interest in it, the story gave me little or no emotion. Once only did I get a genuine thrill, and that was at the point where young Jasper finds the sailor's cap (p. 25), and why at this point more than another is past explaining. In later efforts I have written several pages with a shaking pen and amid dismal signs of grief; and, on revision, have usually had to tear those pages up. On the whole, my short experience goes against

_si vis me flere, dolendum est Primum ipsi tibi._

But if _on revision_ an author is moved to tears or laughter by any part of his work, then he may reckon pretty safely upon it, no matter with how stony a gravity it was written.