Genius in Sunshine and Shadow Part 3

It is related of Bacon that he did not drink wine when engaged in pen-craft, but he was accustomed to have sherry poured into a broad open vessel, and to inhale its fragrance with great relish. He believed that his brain thus received the stimulating influence without the narcotic effect. Sheridan could neither write nor talk until warmed by wine. If about to make a speech in the House, he would, just before rising, swallow half a tumbler of raw brandy. Burke presents a remarkable contrast; his great stimulant being _hot water_. The most impa.s.sioned pa.s.sages of his speeches had no other physical inspiration; all the rest came from his glowing soul, which was powerful enough to vitalize his body for an oration of four hours' length. The food which sustained him on such occasions was _cold_ mutton, the drink being _hot_ water. Brandy and port, even claret and champagne, would have driven him wild, though they were the ordinary stimulants of his contemporaries. Burke was, like Burns, a man of an excitable temperament; but, unlike Burns, he was wise enough to avoid all dangerous alcoholic excitements, which increased the impulsive elements of his nature and diminished the action of his reason. It will be observed that even in the occasional violence of his invective, his pa.s.sion is still reasoned pa.s.sion, or reason penetrated by pa.s.sion, so as to reach the will as well as to convince the understanding.

Addison, with his bottle of wine at each end of the long gallery at Holland House, where he walked back and forth perfecting his thoughts, will be sure to be recalled by the reader in this connection.

Consciously or unconsciously he took a gla.s.s of the stimulant at each turn, until wrought up to the required point. Dr. Radcliffe, the eminent London physician and author, was often found in an over-stimulated condition. Summoned one evening to a lady patient, he found that he was too much inebriated to count her pulse, and so muttered, "Drunk! dead drunk!" and hastened homeward. The next morning, while experiencing intense mortification over the recollection, he received a note from the same patient, in which she said, she knew only too well her own condition when he called, and begged him to keep the matter secret, enclosing a hundred-pound note.

Burns was wont oftentimes to compose, as he tells us, "by the lee side of a bowl of punch, which had overset every mortal in the company except the haut-boy and the Muse."[68] Of course "the pernicious expedient of stimulants," as Carlyle would say, only served to use up more rapidly his already wasted physical strength. Sometimes, however, Burns would compose walking in the open fields. His first effort was to master some pleasing air, and then he easily produced appropriate words for it. One n.o.ble trait of Burns's character should not be forgotten. Though he died in abject poverty, he did not leave a farthing of debt owed to any one.

Nothing could be finer than Carlyle's exordium in his review of Lockhart's "Life of Burns:" "With our readers in general, with men of right feeling anywhere, we are not required to plead for Burns. In pitying admiration he lies enshrined in all our hearts, in a far n.o.bler mausoleum than that one of marble; neither will his works ever as they are, pa.s.s away from the memory of men. While the Shakspeares and Miltons roll on like mighty rivers through the country of Thought, bearing fleets of traffickers and a.s.siduous pearl-fishers on their waves, this little Valclusa Fountain will also arrest our eye; for this also is of Nature's own and most cunning workmanship, bursts from the depths of the earth, with a full gushing current, into the light of day; and often will the traveller turn aside to drink of its clear waters, and muse among its rocks and pines."

As we have seen, musical composers, like those devoted to literature, are apt to have singular fancies. Gluck, who was at one time the music-teacher of Marie Antoinette, and whose operas have ent.i.tled him to a niche in the temple of fame, could compose only while under the influence of champagne, two bottles of which he would consume at a sitting. He was an eccentric individual, singing and acting the part for which he at the same time wrote the music. Handel, when he felt the inspiration of music upon him, sought the graveyard of some village church, and on the moss-grown stones laid his portfolio and wrote his notes, never trying their harmony until he had completed the entire piece. It seems strange to us, in the light of his great genius, to think what an immense glutton Handel was. We have already spoken of this, but recur to it again in this connection; for one is puzzled how to reconcile the grossness of his appet.i.te with his aesthetic nature. He could devour more food at one dinner than any other composer in three.[69] Never before was height and breadth of musical genius combined with such enormous appet.i.te for the good things of the table; and yet his digestion was as sound as his love and need of food was portentous. Everything about this great composer was gigantesque, as became a giant. His forgetive brain was recruited by the nourishment drawn from a ravenous yet healthy stomach.

Unlike Handel's mode of composition, Mozart played his music upon the harpsichord before he wrote a note of it upon paper; but he had a most exalted idea of his mission, and prepared himself for composition, not by partaking of a hearty dinner, but by reading favorite cla.s.sic authors for hours before beginning what was to him a sacred task. His favorite authors on such occasions were Dante and Petrarch. He chose the morning for his compositions; but he would often delay writing his scores for the musicians until it was too late to copy them, and sometimes failed altogether to write out the part intended to be performed by himself; yet when the moment arrived, so perfectly had all been arranged in his mind, he played it without hesitation, instrument in hand. The Emperor Joseph, before whom he was performing on one occasion, observed that the music-sheet before him contained no characters whatever, and asked, "Where is your part?" "Here," replied Mozart, pointing with his finger to his forehead.[70] He became blind before he was forty years of age, but continued to compose. The duet and chorus in "Judas Maccabaeus," and some others of his finest efforts were produced after his total deprivation of sight; nor did he cease to conduct his oratorios in public on account of his blindness.

Spontini, the Italian composer, like Sarti, could only produce his music in the dark, dictating to some one sitting in an adjoining room.

Rossini, author of the "Barber of Seville," composed his music as the elder Dumas was accustomed to write; namely, in bed. Offenbach, of opera-bouffe notoriety, almost lived on coffee while creating his dainty aerial music. The writer of these pages met this composer in Paris in 1873, when he was at the height of his popularity, and was told by him that he took no wine or spirit until _after_ his work of composition was completed. Cimarosa, the Italian composer, who won national fame before he was twenty-five, derived his inspiration from the noisy crowd. Auber, the French composer, could write only among the green fields and the silence of the country. Sacchini, another Italian composer, lost the thread of his inspiration unless attended by his favorrite cats, they sitting all about him while he worked, some upon the table, some on the floor, and one always perched contentedly between his shoulders on his neck; he declared that their purring was to him a soothing anodyne, and fitted him for composition by making him content. Eugene Sue would not take up his pen except in full dress and with white kids on his hands.

Thus he produced the "Mysteries of Paris," which Dumas designated as "one-gross-of-gloves long." Buffon would only sit down to write after taking a bath and donning pure linen with a full frilled bosom.

Haydn[71] declared that he could not compose unless he wore the large seal-ring which Frederick the Great had given him. He would sit wrapped in silence for an hour or more, after which he would seize his pen and write rapidly without touching a musical instrument; and he rarely altered a line. In early life, poor, freezing in a miserable garret, he studied the rudiments of his favorite art by the side of an old broken harpsichord. For a period of six years he endured a bitter conflict with poverty, being often compelled for the sake of warmth to lie in bed most of the day as well as the night. Finally he was relieved from this thraldom by the generosity of his patron, Prince Esterhazy, a pa.s.sionate lover of music, who appointed him his chapel-master, with a salary sufficient to keep him supplied with the ordinary comforts of life.

Crebillon the elder, a celebrated lyric poet and member of the French Academy, was enamoured of solitude, and could only write effectively under such circ.u.mstances. His imagination teemed with romances, and he produced eight or ten dramas which enjoyed popularity in their day,--about 1776. One day, when he was alone and in a deep reverie, a friend entered his study hastily. "Don't disturb me," cried the author, "I am enjoying a moment of happiness: I am going to hang a villain of a minister, and banish another who is an idiot."

We have lately mentioned Dumas. Hans Christian Andersen, speaking of the various habits of authors, thus refers to the elder Dumas, with whom he was intimate: "I generally found him in bed, even long after mid-day, where he lay, with pen, ink, and paper by his side, and wrote his newest drama. On entering his apartment I found him thus one day; he nodded kindly to me, and said: 'Sit down a minute. I have just now a visit from my Muse; she will be going directly.' He wrote on, and after a brief silence shouted '_Vivat_' sprang out of bed, and said, 'The third act is finished!'"[72]

Lamartine was peculiar in his mode of composition, and never saw his productions, after the first draft, until they were printed, bound, and issued to the public. He was accustomed to walk forth in his park during the after part of the day, or of a moonlit evening, with pencil and pieces of paper, and whatever ideas struck him he recorded. That was the end of the matter so far as he was concerned. These pieces of paper he threw into a special box, without a number or t.i.tle upon them. His literary secretary with much patient ability a.s.sorted these papers, arranged them as he thought best, and sold them to the publishers at a royal price. We know of no similar instance where authorship and recklessness combined have produced creditable results. Certainly such indifference argued only the presence of weakness and irresponsibility, which were indeed prominent characteristics of Lamartine.

The remarkable facility with which Goethe's poems were produced is said to have resembled improvisation, an inspiration almost independent of his own purposes. "I had come," he says, "to regard the poetic talent dwelling in me entirely as nature; the rather that I was directed to look upon external nature as its proper subject. The exercise of this poetic gift might be stimulated and determined by occasion, but it flowed forth more joyfully and richly, when it came involuntarily, or even against my will." Addison, whose style is perhaps the nearest to perfection in ancient or modern literature, did not reach that standard without much patient labor. Pope tells us that "he would show his verses to several friends, and would alter nearly everything that any of them hinted was wrong. He seemed to be distrustful of himself, and too much concerned about his character as a poet, or, as he expressed it, 'too solicitous for that kind of praise which G.o.d knows is a very little matter after all.'" Pope himself published nothing until it had been a twelvemonth on hand, and even then the printer's proofs were full of alterations. On one occasion this was carried so far that Dodsley, his publisher, thought it better to have the whole recomposed than to attempt to make the necessary alterations. Yet Pope admits that "the things that I have written fastest have always pleased the most. I wrote the 'Essay on Criticism' fast, for I had digested all the matter in prose before I began it in verse."

"I never work better," says Luther, "than when I am inspired by anger: when I am angry, I can write, pray, and preach well; for then my whole temperament is quickened, my understanding sharpened, and all mundane vexations and temptations depart." We are reminded of Burke's remark in this connection: "A vigorous mind is as necessarily accompanied with violent pa.s.sions as a great fire with great heat." Luther, however ribald he may have been at times, had the zeal of honesty. There was not a particle of vanity or self-sufficiency in the great reformer. "Do not call yourselves Lutherans," he said to his followers; "call yourselves Christians. Who and what is Luther? Has Luther been crucified for the world?"

Churchill,[73] the English poet and satirist, was so averse to correcting and blotting his ma.n.u.script that many errors were unexpunged, and many lines which might easily have been improved were neglected.

When expostulated with upon this subject by his publisher, he replied that erasures were to him like cutting away so much of his flesh; thus expressing his utter repugnance to an author's most urgent duty. Though Macaulay tells us that his vices were not so great as his virtues, still he was dissipated and licentious. Cowper was a great admirer of his poetry, and called him "the great Churchill." George Wither,[74] the English poet, satirist, and political writer, was compelled to watch and fast when he was called upon to write. He "went out of himself," as he said, at such times, and if he tasted meat or drank one gla.s.s of wine he could not produce a verse or sentence.

Rogers, who wrote purely _con amore_, took all the time to perfect his work which his fancy dictated, and certainly over-refined many of his compositions. The "Pleasures of Memory" occupied him seven years. In writing, composing, re-writing, and altering his "Columbus" and "Human Life," each required just double that period of time before the fastidious author felt satisfied to call it finished. Besides this, the second edition of each went through another series of emendations. The observant reader will find that Rogers has often weakened his first and best thoughts by this elaboration. The expression of true genius oftenest comes, like the lightning, in its full power and effect at the first flash. "Every event that a man would master," says Holmes, "must be mounted on the run, and no man ever caught the reins of a thought except as it galloped by him." One who has had years of active editorial experience on the daily press can hardly conceive of such fastidious slowness of composition as characterizes some authors. Sir Joshua Reynolds, in speaking of Rogers, Rochefoucauld, Cowper, and others, and their dilatory habits of composition, says, that although men of ordinary talents may be highly satisfied with their productions, men of genius never are,--an a.s.sumption which is not borne out by facts, as we shall have occasion to show in these chapters. Modesty is not always the characteristic of genius; and very few popular writers are without a due share of vanity in their natures.

Voltaire somewhere says that an author should write with the rapidity which genius inspires, but should correct with care and deliberation; which doubtless expresses the process adopted by this unscrupulous but versatile writer, of whom Carlyle said: "With the single exception of Luther, there is perhaps, in these modern ages, no other man of a merely intellectual character, whose influence and reputation have become so entirely European as that of Voltaire." Sydney Smith was so rapid a producer that he had not patience even to read over his compositions when finished. He would throw down his ma.n.u.script and say: "There, it is done; now, Kate, do look it over, and put dots to the _i's_ and strokes to the _t's_." He was once advised by a fashionable publisher to attempt a three-volume novel. "Well," said he, after some seeming consideration, "if I do so, I must have an archdeacon for my hero, to fall in love with the pew-opener, with the clerk for a confidant; tyrannical interference of the church-wardens; clandestine correspondence concealed under the ha.s.sock; appeal to the parishioners," etc. He was overflowing with humor to the very close of life. He wrote to Lady Carlisle during his last illness, saying, "If you hear of sixteen or eighteen pounds of human flesh, they belong to _me_. I look as if a curate had been taken out of me."

Buffon caused his "epoques de la Nature" to be copied eighteen times, so many corrections and changes were made. As he was then (1778) over seventy years of age, one would think this an evidence that his mind was failing him. Pope covered with memoranda every sc.r.a.p of clear paper which came in his way. Some of his most elaborate literary work was begun and finished on the backs of old letters and bits of yellow wrappers. We do not wonder that such fragmentary ma.n.u.script always suggested the idea of revision and correction. It is difficult to understand why Pope should have a.s.sumed this small virtue of economy and yet often have been lavish in other directions; indeed, it may be questioned whether it was intended to be an act of economy. Such petty parsimony is inexplicable, but certainly it grew into a fixed habit with him. We believe it was Swift who first called him "paper-saving Pope;"

but Swift was nearly as eccentric a paper-saver as Pope. He wrote to Dr.

Sheridan: "Keep very regular accounts, in large books and a fair hand; not like me, who, to save paper, confuse everything!" Miss Mitford had the same habit of writing upon waste sc.r.a.ps of paper, fly-leaves of books, envelopes, and odd rejected bits, all in so small a hand as to be nearly illegible. William Hazlitt was also remarkable for the same practice, and we are told that he even made the first outline of some of his essays on the walls of his chamber, much to the annoyance of his landlady.

Some idea of the rapidity with which Byron wrote may be inferred from the fact that the "Prisoner of Chillon" was written in two days and sent away complete to the printer. The traveller in Switzerland does not fail to visit the house--once a wayside inn, at Merges, on the Lake of Geneva--where Byron wrote this poem while detained by a rainstorm, in 1816. On the heights close at hand is the Castle of Wuffens, dating back to the tenth century. Morges is a couple of leagues from Lausanne, and the spot where Gibbon finished his "Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire,"

in 1787. Colton, the philosophical but erratic author of "Lacon," wrote that entire volume upon covers of letters and such small sc.r.a.ps of paper as happened to be at hand when a happy thought inspired him. Having completed a sentence, and rounded it to suit his fancy, he threw it into a pile with hundreds of others, which were finally turned over to the printer in a cloth bag. No cla.s.sification or system of arrangement was observed. Colton exhibited all the singularities that only too often characterize genius, especially as regards improvidence and recklessness of habit. He lived unattended, in a single room in Princes Street, Soho, London, in a neglected apartment containing scarcely any furniture. He wrote very illegibly upon a rough deal table with a stumpy pen. He was finally so pressed with debts that he absconded to avoid his London creditors, though he held the very comfortable vicarage of Kew, in Surrey.

Montaigne, the French philosopher and essayist, whose writings have been translated into every modern tongue, like the musician Sacchini was marvellously fond of cats, and would not sit down to write without his favorite by his side. Thomas Moore required complete isolation when he did literary work, and shut himself up, as did Charles d.i.c.kens. He was a very slow and painstaking producer. Some friend having congratulated him upon the seeming facility and appropriateness with which a certain line was introduced into a poem he had just published, Moore replied, "Facility! that line cost me hours of patient labor to achieve." His verses, which read so smoothly, and which appear to have glided so easily from his pen, were the result of infinite labor and patience. His ma.n.u.script, like Tennyson's, was written, amended, rewritten, and written again, until it was finally satisfactory to his critical ear and fancy. "Easy writing," said Sheridan, "is commonly d.a.m.ned hard reading."

Bishop Warburton tells us that he could "only write in a hand-to-mouth style" unless he had all his books about him; and that the blowing of an east wind, or a fit of the spleen, incapacitated him for literary work; and still another English bishop could write only when in full canonicals, a fact which he frankly admitted. Milton would not attempt to compose except between the vernal and autumnal equinoxes, at which season his poetry came as if by inspiration, and with scarcely a mental effort.[75] Thomson, Collins, and Gray entertained very similar ideas, which when expressed so incensed Dr. Johnson that he publicly ridiculed them. Crabbe fancied that there was something in the effect of a sudden fall of snow that in an extraordinary manner stimulated him to poetic composition; while Lord Orrery found no stimulant equal to a fit of the gout!--all of which fancies are but mild forms of monomania. James Hogg (the Ettrick Shepherd) was only too glad to write without any of these accessories, when he could get any material to write upon. He used to employ a bit of slate, for want of the necessary paper and ink. The son of an humble Scottish farmer, he experienced all sorts of misfortunes in his endeavors to pursue literature as a calling. He was both a prose and poetic writer of considerable native genius, and formed one of the well-drawn characters of Christopher North's "Noctes Ambrosianae." N. P.

Willis in the latter years of his life was accustomed to ride on horseback before he sat down to write. He believed there was a certain nervo-vital influence imparted from the robust health and strength of the animal to the rider, as he once told the writer of these pages; and, so far as one could judge, the influence upon himself certainly favored such a conclusion.

Some authors frankly acknowledge that they have not the necessary degree of patience to apply themselves to the correction of their ma.n.u.scripts.

Ovid, the popular Roman poet, admitted this. Such people may compose with pleasure, but there is the end; neither a sense of responsibility nor a desire for correctness can overcome their const.i.tutional laziness.

Pope, Dryden, Moore, Coleridge, Swift,--in short, nine-tenths of the popular authors of the past and the present, all change, correct, amplify, or contract, and interline more or less every page of ma.n.u.script which they produce, and often to such a degree as greatly to confuse the compositors. Richard Savage, the unfortunate English poet, could not, or would not, bring himself to correct his faulty sentences, being greatly indebted to the intelligence of the proof-reader for the presentable form in which his writings finally appeared. Julius Scaliger, a celebrated scholar and critic, was, on the other hand, an example of remarkable correctness, so that his ma.n.u.script and the printer's pages corresponded exactly, page for page and line for line.

Hume,[76] the historian, was never done with his manifold corrections; his sense of responsibility was unlimited, and his appreciation of his calling was grand. Fenelon and Gibbon were absolutely correct in their first efforts; and so was Adam Smith, though he dictated to an amanuensis.

We are by no means without sympathy for those writers who dread and avoid the reperusal and correction of their ma.n.u.scripts. Only those who are familiar with the detail of book-making can possibly realize its trying minutiae. When one has finished the composition and writing of a chapter, his work is only begun; it must be read and re-read with care, to be sure of absolute correctness. When once in type, it must be again carefully read for the correction of printer's errors, and again revised by second proof; and finally a third proof is necessary, to make sure that all errors previously marked have been corrected. By this time, however satisfactory in composition, the text becomes "more tedious than a twice-told tale." Any author must be singularly conceited who can, after such experience, take up a chapter or book of his own production and read it with any great degree of satisfaction. G.o.deau, Bishop of Venice, used to say that "to compose is an author's heaven; to correct, an author's purgatory; but to revise the press, an author's h.e.l.l!"

Guido Reni, whose superb paintings are among the gems of the Vatican, in the height of his fame would not touch pencil or brush except in full dress. He ruined himself by gambling and dissolute habits, and became lost as to all ambition for that art which had been so grand a mistress to him in the beginning. He finally arrived at that stage where he lost at the gaming-table and in riotous living what he earned by contract under one who managed his affairs, giving him a stipulated sum for just so much daily work in his studio. Such was the famous author of that splendid example of art, the "Martyrdom of Saint Peter," in the Vatican.

Parmigiano, the eminent painter, was full of the wildness of genius. He became mad after the philosopher's stone, jilting art as a mistress, though his eager creditors forced him to set once more to work, though to little effect.

Great painters, like great writers, have had their peculiar modes of producing their effects. Thus Domenichino was accustomed to a.s.sume and enact before the canvas the pa.s.sion and character he intended to depict with the brush. While engaged upon the "Martyrdom of Saint Andrew,"

Caracci, a brother painter, came into his studio and found him in a violent pa.s.sion. When this fit of abstraction had pa.s.sed, Caracci embraced him, admitting that Domenichino had proved himself his master, and that he had learned from him the true manner of expressing sentiment or pa.s.sion upon the canvas.

Richard Wilson, the eminent English landscape-painter, strove in vain, he said, to paint the motes dancing in the sunshine. A friend coming into his studio found the artist sitting dejected on the floor, looking at his last work. The new-comer examined the canvas and remarked critically that it looked like a broad landscape just after a shower.

Wilson started to his feet in delight, saying, "That is the effect I intended to represent, but thought I had failed." Poor Wilson possessed undoubted genius, but neglected his art for brandy, and was himself neglected in turn. He was one of the original members of the Royal Academy.

Undoubtedly, genius is at times nonplussed and at fault, like plain humanity, and is helped out of a temporary dilemma by accident,--as when Poussin the painter, having lost all patience in his fruitless attempts to produce a certain result with the brush, impatiently dashed his sponge against the canvas and brought out thereby the precise effect desired; namely, the foam on a horse's mouth.

Washington Allston[77] is recalled to us in this connection, one of the most eminent of our American painters, and a poet of no ordinary pretensions. "The Sylphs of the Seasons and other Poems" was published in 1813. He was remarkable for his graphic and animated conversational powers, and was the warm personal friend of Coleridge and Washington Irving. Irving says, "His memory I hold in reverence and affection as one of the purest, n.o.blest, and most intellectual beings that ever honored me with his friendship." While living in London he was elected a.s.sociate of the Royal Academy. Bostonians are familiar with Allston's half-finished picture of "Belshazzar's Feast," upon which he was engaged when death s.n.a.t.c.hed him from his work.

CHAPTER IV.

It has been said that the first three men in the world were a gardener, a ploughman, and a grazier; while all political economists admit that the real wealth and stamina of a nation must be looked for among the cultivators of the soil. Was it not Swift who declared that the man who could make two ears of corn or two blades of gra.s.s grow upon a spot of ground where only one grew before, deserved better of mankind than the whole race of politicians? Bacon, Cowley, Sir William Temple, Buffon, and Addison were all attached to horticulture, and more or less time was devoted by them to the cultivation of trees and plants of various sorts; nor did they fail to record the refined delight and the profit they derived therefrom. Daniel Webster was an enthusiastic agriculturist; so were Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Walter Scott, Horace Greeley, Gladstone, Evarts,[78] Wilder, Loring, Poore, and a host of other contemporaneous and noted men. "They who labor in the earth," said Jefferson, "are the chosen people of G.o.d."

But the habits and mode of composition adopted by literary men still crowd upon the memory. Hobbes, the famous English philosopher, author of a "Treatise on Human Nature," a political work ent.i.tled the "Leviathan,"

etc., was accustomed to compose in the open air. The top of his walking-stick was supplied with pen and inkhorn, and he would pause anywhere to record his thoughts in the note-book always carried in his pocket. Virgil rose early in the morning and wrote at a furious rate innumerable verses, which he afterwards pruned and altered and polished, as he said, after the manner of a bear licking her cubs into shape. The Earl of Roscommon, in his "Essay on Translated Verse," declared this to be the duty of the poet,--

"To write with fury and correct with phlegm."

Dr. Darwin, the ingenious English poet, wrote his works, like some others of whom we have spoken, on sc.r.a.ps of paper with a pencil while travelling. His old-fashioned sulky was so full of books as to give barely room for him to sit and to carry a well-stored hamper of fruits and sweetmeats, of which he was immoderately fond.

Rousseau tells us that he composed in bed at night, or else out of doors while walking, carefully recording his ideas in his brain, arranging and turning them many times until they satisfied him, and then he committed them to paper perfected. He said it was in vain for him to attempt to compose at a table surrounded by books and all the usual accessories of an author. Irving wrote most of the "Stout Gentleman" mounted on a stile at Stratford-on-Avon, while his friend Leslie, the painter, was engaged in taking sketches of the interesting locality. Jane Taylor, the English poetess and prose writer, began to produce creditable work at a very early age, and used at first to compose tales and dramas while whipping a top, committing them to paper at the close of that somewhat trivial exercise. As she grew older she said that she could find mental inspiration only from outdoor exercise.

Petavius, the learned Jesuit, when composing his "Theologica Dogmata"

and other works, would leave his table and pen at the end of every other hour to twirl his chair, first with one hand, then with the other, for ten minutes, by way of exercise. Cardinal Richelieu resorted to jumping in his garden, and in bad weather leaped over the chairs and tables indoors,--an exercise which seemed to have a special charm for him.

Samuel Clark, the English philosopher and mathematician, adopted Richelieu's plan of exercise when tired of continuous writing. Pope says, with regard to exercise, "I, like a poor squirrel, am continually in motion, indeed, but it is only a cage of three feet: my little excursions are like those of a shopkeeper, who walks every day a mile or two before his own door, but minds his business all the while."

We are told that Douglas Jerrold, when engaged in preparing literary matter, used to walk back and forth before his desk, talking wildly to himself, occasionally stopping to note down his thoughts. Sometimes he would burst forth in boisterous laughter when he hit upon a droll idea.

He was always extremely restless, would pa.s.s out of the house into the garden and stroll about, carelessly picking leaves from the trees and chewing them; then suddenly hastening back to his desk, he recorded any thoughts or sentences which had formed themselves in his mind. Jerrold wrote so fine a hand, forming his letters so minutely, that his ma.n.u.script was hardly legible to those not accustomed to it. He was very fastidious about his writing-desk, permitting nothing upon it except pen, ink, and paper. Like most persons who habitually resort to stimulants, he could not be content with a single gla.s.s of spirits or wine, but consumed many, until he was only too often unfitted for mental labor. Jerrold's wit was of a coa.r.s.er texture than that of Sheridan, but, unlike his, it came with spontaneous force; it was always ready, though it had not the polish which premeditation is able to impart.

Oftentimes his wit was severely sarcastic, but as a rule it was only genial and mirth-provoking.

It was asked in Jerrold's club, on a certain occasion, what was the best definition of dogmatism. "There is but one," he instantly replied,--"the maturity of puppyism." A member remarked one day that the business of a mutual acquaintance was going to the devil. "All right," said Jerrold; "then he's sure to get it back again." Another member who was not very popular with the club, hearing a certain melody spoken of, said, "That always carries me away when I hear it." "Cannot some one whistle it?"

asked Jerrold. Another member, who was rather given to boasting, said: "Very singular! I dined at the Marchioness of So-and-so's last week, and we actually had no fish." "Easily explained," said Jerrold; "no doubt they had eaten it all upstairs." When Heraud, a somewhat bombastic versifier, asked him if he had read his "Descent into h.e.l.l," Jerrold instantly replied, "No; I had rather see it." Being asked what was the idea of Harriet Martineau's rather atheistical book, he answered that it was plain enough,--"There is no G.o.d, and Harriet is his Prophet." This is even better than the remark of another wit who, when asked what was the outcome of a meeting before which three of the ablest and most dogmatic Positivists in England made speeches, replied that the result arrived at was this: that there were three persons and no G.o.d. Jerrold could not confine himself to any regular system of work, but drove the quill at such times and only to such purpose as his erratic mood indicated, jumping from one subject to another like one crossing a brook upon stepping-stones. This, however, was a habit by no means peculiar to Douglas Jerrold. There are some ludicrous stories told of him; like that of his being pursued by a printer's boy about the town, from house to club, from club to the theatre, and so on, and finally of his being overtaken, getting into a corner and writing an admirable article with pencil and paper on the top of his hat.

Aga.s.siz,[79] the great Swiss naturalist, who became an adopted and honored son of this country, was singularly unmethodical in his habits of professional labor. If he was suddenly seized with an interest in some scientific inquiry, he would pursue it at once, putting by all present work, though it might be that he had just got fairly started in another direction. "I always like to take advantage," he would say, "of my productive moods." The rule that we must finish one thing before we begin another, had no force with him. An individual connected with the lyceum of a neighboring city called upon Aga.s.siz to induce him to lecture on a certain occasion, but was courteously informed by the scientist that he could not comply with the request. "It will be a great disappointment to our citizens," suggested the caller. "I am sorry for that," replied Aga.s.siz. "We will cheerfully give you double the usual price," added the agent, "if you will accommodate us." "Ah, my dear sir," replied the scientist, with that earnest but genial expression so natural to his manly features, "I cannot afford to waste time in making money."

A very similar habit of composition or study possessed Goldsmith, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Pope, and some others of the poets, who not infrequently laid by a half-constructed composition for two or three years, then finally took up the neglected theme, finished and published it. This unmethodical style of doing things is but one of the many eccentricities of genius. Scott said he never knew a man of much ability who could be perfectly regular in his habits, while he had known many a blockhead who could. Southey and Coleridge were at complete antipodes in regard to regularity of habits and punctuality: the former did everything by rule, the latter nothing. Charles Lamb said of Coleridge, "He left forty thousand treatises on metaphysics and divinity, not one of them complete." Neither Aga.s.siz, Coleridge, nor any of similar irregularity in work, is to be imitated in those respects. Had it not been for Aga.s.siz's far-seeing and vigorous powers,--in short, for his great genius, he could never have accomplished his remarkable mission.

The deduction which we naturally draw is, that method is a good servant but a bad master. If genius were to be trammelled by system and order, it would suffocate. Perhaps Montaigne was nearly right when he thought that individuals ought sometimes to cross the line of fixed rules, in order to awaken their vigor and keep them from growing musty.

Coleridge was much addicted to the habit of marginal writing; which, though sadly wasteful on his own part, was very enriching to those friends who loaned him from their libraries.[80] Charles Lamb, who was not inclined to spare book-borrowers as a tribe, had no reflections to cast upon Coleridge for this habit. The depth, weight, and originality of his comments as hastily and carelessly penned on the margins of books were wonderful, and if collected and cla.s.sified would form several volumes, not only of captivating interest, but of rare critical value, as the few which have been brought together abundantly prove. In one volume which he returned to Lamb is this memorandum: "I shall die soon, my dear Charles Lamb, and then you will not be vexed that I have be-scribbled your book. S. T. C., May 2d, 1811." "Elia" valued these marginal notes beyond price, and said that to lose a volume to Coleridge carried some sense and meaning with it. These critical notes often nearly equalled in quant.i.ty of matter the original text. In his article upon the subject, Lamb says, "I counsel thee, shut not thy heart nor thy library against S. T. C." As we have already said, while this erratic expenditure of Coleridge's rare literary taste and judgment enriched others, it in a degree impoverished himself; for had the same time and thought been expended upon consecutive literary work, it would have produced volumes of inestimable value to the world at large, and have proved monumental to their author.