The new dominion. [volume] (Morgantown, W. Va.) 1876-1904, 1877-08-11
What ii Costs to Write Wen.

Excellence is not matured in a day,
and the cost of it is an old story. The
beginning of Plato's Republic it is
said was found in his tablet, written over
and over a variety of ways. Addison,
we are told, wore out the patience of the
printer; frequently, when nearly a whole
impression of the Spectator was worked
of, he would stop the press to insert some
new proposition. Lambs most sportive
essays were the result of most intense
brain-labor; he used to spend week at II
time in celebrating a single humorous
letter to friend, Tennyson is reported
to have written Come into the Garden
Maud, more than fifty times over before
it passed him and on Locksley Hall,
the first draft of which was written in
two days, he spent the better part of six
weeks, for eight hours day, in altering
and polishing. Dickens, when he inten-
Died to write Christmas story, shut him.
self up for six weeks, lived the life of
hermit, and came out looking rs haggard
as a murderer. Balzac, after he had
thought out thoroughly one of his
philosophical romances, and amassed his
materials in a most laborious manner, re-
tired to his study, and from that time
until his book had gone to press society
saw him no more. When he appeared
again among his friends, he looked, said
his publisher, in the popular phrase, like
his own ghost. The manuscriptwas after
ward altered and copied, when it passed
into the hands of the printer, from whose
slips the book was rewritten for the
third time. Again it went into the hands
of the printer-two, three, and some
times four separate proofs being required
before the authors leave could be got to
send the perpetually rewritten-book to
press at last, and to have done with it.
He was literally the terror Of all printers
and editors. Moore thought it quick
work If he wrote seventy lines of Lalla
Rookh" in a week. Kinglake's "Eothen,"
we are told, was rewritten five or six
times, and was kept in the authors
writing-desk almost as long as Words
worth kept the White Doe of Ryl-
stone" and kept, like that, to be taken
out for review and correction almost
every day. Buttons Studies of MAJ
ture cost him fifty years of labor, and
he recopied it eighteen times before he
sent 1t to the printer. He composed in
singular manner, writing on large-szed
paper, in which, as in a ledger, five dis
tinct columns were ruled. In the first
column he wrote down the first thoughts;
in the second he corrected, enlarged and
pruned it; and 50 on, until he reached the
fifth column, within which he finally
wrote the result of his labor. But even
after this he would re-compose a sentence
twenty times, and once devoted fourteen
hours to finding the proper word with
which to round off a period" John
Foster often spent hours on single
sentence. Ten years elapsed between the
first sketch of Goldsmiths "Traveer
and its completion. LaRochefaucauld
spent fifteen years in preparing his little
book of maxims, altering some of them,
Segrais says, nearly thirty times. We
all know how Sheridan polished his wit
and finished his jokes, the same things
being found on different bits of paper,
differently expressed. Rogers showed
Crabb Robinson note to his Z" Italy,"
which, he said, took him two weeks to
write. 1t consists of very few lines.