The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1878-04-27

fortunate poet, therefore, lost both his
pains and his fee. So morbidly anxious
| was Cardinal Bembo about verbal cor.
lrectness, that every poem he composed
is said to have passed successfully
through forty portfolios, which repre-.
sented the various stages towards com
pletenes. The great Pascal affords
another instance of similar literary con
scientiousness. What he especially
aimed at was breyity. He once apollo
gized to friend for writing him a long
letter, on the ground that he had had
no time to make it shorter-and the re-
suit is that his 7" Provincial Letters
scarcely yield to Tacitus, or to the
:" Letters of Junius," in concise, cpl
grammatic brilliancy.
Some authors have rapidly sketched
the plan of their intended work first,
and have reserved their pains fol fill
ing out the details. The great French
novelist, Balzac, followed this method.
He sent off to the printer the skeleton
of the intended romance, leaving pages
of blank paper between for conVersa-
tons, descriptions, etc; as soon as that
was struck off he shut himself up in his
study, eat and drank nothing but bread
and water. till he had filled up the blank
spaces, and in this way laboriouslv
completed his book. Goodwin wrote
his "Caleb Williams backwards
beginning, that is to say, with the last
chapter, and working on to the first.
Richardson produced his ponderous
novels by painfully celebrating differ
ent portions at different times. Burton,
the author of the Anatomy of Melan-
chOly;" the great scholars Barthius and
Turnebus; Butler, the author of "Hu-
dibras;" Locke; Fuller, the " witty" di-
vine; Bishop Horne, Warburton, Hurd,
and many others kept commonplace
books, which may account for the CO.
pious and opposite illustrations which
enrich their volumes. Sheridan and
Hook were always on the alert for bits
of brilliant conversation and stray
jokes, which they took good care to lot
down in their pocket-books for future
use. The great Bentley always bought
editions of classical authors with very
broad margins, and put down the OBJ
servations which might occur to him in
the course of his reading-which is the
secret of his lavish erudition. Pope
scrubbed down stray thoughts for future
use whenever they struck him-at a
dinnertable, in an open carriage, at
his toilet, and in bed. Hogarth would
sketch any face that struck him on his
tinger-nail, hence the marvellous diver
sity of feature in his infinite galleries
of portraits. Swift would lie in bed in
the morning, thinking of wit for the
day." and Theodore Hook generally
"made up his impromptues the night
BEFORE Washington Irving was fond
of taking his portfolio out into the fields,
and laboriously manipulating his grace
full periods while swinging on stile.
Wordsworth and De Quincy did the
same. 1t would be easy to multiply
instances of the pain and labor expended
on compositions which to all appear
ance bear no traces of such effort.
But it is now time to reverse this
picture, and to mention meritorious
pieces produced against time and with
extraordinary facility. Lucilius, the
Roman satirist, wrote with such ease,
that he used to boast that he could turn
off two hundred verses while standing
on one leg. Ennius was quite as fluent.
OF Shakespeare we are told, " His mind
and hand went together, and what he
thought he uttered with that easiness
that we (the editors of the first folio)
have scarce received from him blot in
his papers," When the fits'of inspira-
ton were on Milton, his amanuensis
could scarcely keep pace with the fast
flowing verses; but we must remember
that the poet had been brooding over
his immortal work for years before
line was committed to paper. The most
marvellous illustrations of this facility
in writing are to be found in the two
Spanish poets 'Calderon and Lope de
Vega. The latter could write play in
three or four hours; he supplied the
Spanish stage with upwards of two
thousand original dramas, and Hallam
calculates that during the course of his
life he "reeled OFF, upwards of twenty
one million three hundred thousand
lines! OF English writer's, perhaps the
most fluent and easy have been Dryden
and Sir Walter Scott. In one short
year Dryden produced four of his great
est works namely, the first part of
" Absalom and Achitophel," "The
Medal" "Mac Flecknoe,n his share in
the second part of " Absalom and Achi-
tophel," and the "Religio Laici." He
was less than three years in translating
the whole of Virgil. He composed his
elaborate parallel between poetry and
painting in twelve mornings. "Alex-
ander's Feast was struck out at sin
gle sitting. Indeed, he says himself that,
when he was writing, ideas thronged so
fast that the only difficulty he had was
in selection. Everybody knows the
extraordinary literary facility of Sir
Walter Scott-how his amanuensis,
when he employed one, could not keep
pace with the breathless speed with
which he dictated his marvellous ro-
names. five can Judge from the many
original MSS. of his novels and poems
which have been preserved to us, it
would seem that he scarcely ever recast
sentence or altered a word when it was
committed to paper. The effect of this
is that both Dryden and Scott have left
a mass of writings valuable for the gen
ius with which they are instinct, but
defaced with errors, with grammatical