The Indiana State sentinel. [volume] (Indianapolis) 1868-1895, 1878-05-01
HOW GREAT MEN WORK.
ICassell's Magazine.l


The methods of authors in the course of
composition have been singular, and though
no two of them have worked alike, they
have, most of them, illustrated the old PROV
erb that genius is labor, and that few great
works have been produced which have not
been the result of INV carried perseverance as
well as of brilliant natural powers. Some
men have undoubtedly possessed astonishing
facility and readiness both of conception
and expression, as we shall presently see;
but as a rule, the writings of such men, ex-
cept in the case of Shakespeare, are not so val
uable as they might have been, and are mar
red by crudities which might otherwise have
been finished beauties by deiormities which
should have been graces- First among the sons
of literary toll stands Virgil. He used, we
are told, to pour out a large number of
verses in the morning and to spend the rest
of the day in pruning them down; he has
humorously compared himself to a she bear,
who ticks her cubs into shape. 1t took him
three years to compose his 10 short Eclogues;
seven years to elaborate his Georges, which
comprise little more than 1000 verses; and
he employed more than twelve years in
polishing his "Eneid," being even then so
dissatisfied with it that he wished before mis-
death to commit it to the flames. Horace
was equally indefatiga5le, and there are
single odes in his works which must have
cost him months OF labor. Lucretius' one
so careful was Plato in the niceties of verbal
collocation, that the first sentence in
his Republic was turned in nine
different ways. 1t must have taken
Thucydides upwards of twenty years to
write his history. which is comprised in one
octave volume. Gibbon wrote the first chap
ter of his work three times before be could
please himself; and John Foster, the essay
list, would sometimes speno a week over one
sentence. Addison was so particular that
he would stop the press to insert an epithet,
or even a comma; and Montesouieu, allud-
ing in letter TO one of his works, says to a
correspondent, "You will read it in few
hours but the labor expended on it has
whitened my hair" The great French
critic, ST. Beuve, expended incredible pains
on every word, and two or three octave
pages often represented a whole weeks in
cessant effort Gray would spend months
over a short copy of verses; and there is
a poem of ten lines in Walters works
which, he has himself informed us,
took him a whole summer to formulate.
Miss Austen, Charlotte Bronte, Hume
and Fox have all recorded the trouble they
took. Tasso was unwearied in correcting; so
were Pope and Boileau. Even Macaulay,
with all his fiuency, did not disdain the ap-
plication Of the file; and there are certain
passages in the first chapter of his history
which represent months of patient revision
French poet, which illustrates very anus
ingly the elaborate care he took with his
poems. A certain nobleman of his acquaint-
ance had lost his wife, and was anxious that
Malherbe should dedicate an ode to her
memory, and condole with him on the loss
he had sustained. Malherbe complied, but
was so fastidious in his composition that il
was three years before the elegy was COM
pleted. Just before he sent il In,
he was intensely chagrined to find
that his noble friend had solaced
himself with a new bride; and was, conse-
quently, in no humor to be pestered with an
elegy on his old one. The unfortunate poet,
therefore, lost both his pains and his fee. So
morbidly anxious was Cardinal Bembo about
verbal correctness that every poem he CON-
posed is said to have passed successfully
through forty portfolios, which represented
the various stages toward completeness. The
great Pascal affords another instance of SIM
liar literary conscientiousness. What he
especially aimed at was brevity. He once
apologized to friend for writing him long
letter on the ground that he had had no
time to make it shorter-and the result is
that his Provincial Letters scarcely weld
TO Tacitus or to the Letters of Junius' in
concise epigrammatical brilliancy.
Some authors have rapidly sketched the
plan Of their intended work first and have
reserved their pains for filling out the
details The great French novelist. Balzac,
followed this method. He sent off to the
printer the skeleton of the intended TO-
nance, leaving pages of blank paper between
Tor conversations descriptions, ETC. Assoon
as that was struck off he shut himself up in
his study, eat and drank nothing but bread
and water till he had filed up the blank
spaces, and IN this way laDorieusly complet-
ed his book. Goodwin wrote his ''Caleb
Williams MISUNDERSTANDING, that is to
say, with the last chapter, and working on
70 the hrst Richardson produced his pom
derous novels by painfully celebrating diff
ferent portions at different times. Bur-
ton, the author of the Anatomy
of Melancholy" the great scholars
Barthius and Turnebus; Butler, the author
of "Hudibras;" Locke; Fuller. the "witty'
divine; Bishop Horne Warburton, Hurd
and many others kept commonplace books.
which may account for the copious and APP
poslte illustrations which enrich their vol
umes Sheridan and Hook were ALWAYS on
the alert for bits Of brilliant conversation
and stray jokes, which they took good care
TO jot down In their pocket books for future
use. The great Bentley always bought edi-
tons of classical authors with very broad
margins, and put down the observations
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 dinner table, in an open
carriage, at his toilet and in bed. Hogarth
would sketch any face that struck him on
his finger nail, hence the marvellous diver.
sity Of feature in his infinite galleries of por-