The rapidity with which the work had been produced is described by the writer in the following terms. "Laying aside all other businesses," he says, "and cooping my self up daily for some hours together, betwixt the case and the printing press, I usually afforded the setter copy at the rate of above a whole printed sheet in the day; which, although by reason of the smallness of a Pica letter, and close couching thereof, it did amount to three full sheets of my writing; the aforesaid setter, nevertheless (so nimble a workman he was), would in the space of twenty-four hours make dispatch of the whole, and be ready for another sheet. He and I striving thus who should compose fastest, he with his hand, and I with my brain; and his uncasing of the letters, and placing them in the composing instrument, standing for my conception; and his plenishing of the gally, and imposing of the form, encountering with the supposed equi-value of my writing, we would almost every foot or so jump together in this joynt expedition, and so neerly overtake other in our intended course, that I was oftentimes, (to keep him doing), glad to tear off parcels of ten or twelve lines apeece, and give him them, till more were ready;[201] unto which he would so suddenly put an order, that almost still, before the ink of the written letters was dry, their representatives were, (out of their respective boxes), ranked in the composing-stick; by means of which great haste, I writing but upon the loose sheets of cording-quires, which, as I minced and tore them, looking like pieces of waste paper, troublesome to get rallyed, after such dispersive scattredness, I had not the leisure to read what I had written, till it came to a proof, and sometimes to a full revise. So that by vertue of this unanimous contest, and joint emulation betwixt the theoretick and practical part, which of us should overhye other in celerity, we in the space of fourteen working daies compleated this whole book, (such as it is), from the first notion of the brain to the last motion of the press; and that without any other help on my side, either of quick or dead, (for books I had none, nor possibly would I have made use of any, although I could have commanded them), then [than] what, (by the favour of God), my own judgment and fancy did suggest unto me."[202]