After all, Esmond was a prig." Then he laughed and changed the subject, not caring to dwell on thoughts painful to him.

The elbow-grease of thinking was always distasteful to him, and had no doubt been so when he conceived and carried out this work.
To the ordinary labour necessary for such a novel he added very much by his resolution to write it in a style different, not only from that which he had made his own, but from that also which belonged to the time.

He had devoted himself to the reading of the literature of Queen Anne's reign, and having chosen to throw his story into that period, and to create in it personages who were to be peculiarly concerned with the period, he resolved to use as the vehicle for his story the forms of expression then prevalent.

No one who has not tried it can understand how great is the difficulty of mastering a phase of one's own language other than that which habit has made familiar.

To write in another language, if the language be sufficiently known, is a much less arduous undertaking.