T. E. Lawrence Correspondence – Page 298

3 To H.Williamson (btd.) 2/4/28 If you send them; but do discount my opinion. The Arab business was a freak in my living; and if I did the wonders they ascribe to me, them(e, it was wholly by accident, for in normal times I'm plumb ordinary. I don't believe the yarns they tell. Only it seems unseemly to refuse to accept public opinion about oneself. I wonder what you will do about money. Tarka will not have made much, & the more carefully you write the less you earn: I notice how you notice how the writers who are very widely sold are so often careless writers? Dickens, Dr Mitch... of ... and Tol- stoi, and Balzac: though Balzac rewrote all his nov- els in proof, but he wasn't thinking about their form, so much as at the drama & the characters in them. I wish I could think clearly enough about all the writers in the world, & see if it's more than blind chance which makes one seem good and another bad? If only there was an absolute somewhere; the final standard by which everything could be measured. At present we have ever so many surveys of literature; but they aren't so much surveys as sentimental jour- neys across it. For a survey you must have a meas- ured base; and instead of that we have just opinions & opinions. My brain is like a damp sponge, so I'm going to stop. After I've read the Old Shep I'll send you a proper letter, if I can. Yours TEC 675