[Footnote 10: _The Way of all Flesh_. By Samuel Butler, 11th
impression of 2nd edition. (Fifield.)]
Yet, apart from the general argument, there are particular reasons why
the praise of _The Way of all Flesh_ should be circumspect. Samuel
Butler knew extraordinarily well what he was about. His novel was
written intermittently between 1872 and 1884 when he abandoned it. In
the twenty remaining years of his life he did nothing to it, and we have
Mr Streatfeild's word for it that 'he professed himself dissatisfied
with it as a whole, and always intended to rewrite, or at any rate, to
revise it.' We could have deduced as much from his refusal to publish
the book. The certainty of commercial failure never deterred Butler from
publication; he was in the happy situation of being able to publish at
his own expense a book of whose merit he was himself satisfied. His only
reason for abandoning _The Way of all Flesh_ was his own dissatisfaction
with it. His instruction that it should be published in its present form
after his death proves nothing against his own estimate.
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