Almost to his own surprise⁠—and certainly to Mr. Urquhart’s⁠—the History of Dorset showed signs of drawing to its close. Writing day after day from seven o’clock to ten o’clock, Wolf had come to hit upon a style of chronicling shameful events and disconcerting episodes that cost him less and less effort, as the weeks advanced. What really gave him impetus was a trick he discovered of diffusing his own resentment against the Power behind the universe into his commentaries upon these human aberrations unearthed by his employer! The more disgust he felt for his task, the more saturnine his style became and the faster he wrote! Some of his sentences, when he revised them in cold blood, struck him as possessing quite a Swift-like malignity. He astonished himself by certain misanthropic outbursts. His habitual optimism seemed to fall away at such times, and a ferocious contempt for both men and women lay revealed, like a sullen, evil-looking, drained-out pond!