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

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 unwearied 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 rule, the writings of such men, ex-
cept in the case OF Shakespeare, are not so val
liable as they might have been, and are mar
red by crudities which might otherwise have
been finished beauties, by detormities 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 licks 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 1Eneid," being even then so
dissatisfied with it that he wished before his
death to commit it to the flames. Horace
| was equally indefatigaole, and there are
| single odes in his works which must have
cost HIM months OF labor. Lucretius' one
| poem represents the toll of a whole life; and
| 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
i ter of his work three times before he could
! please himself; and John Foster, the essay
| ist, would sometimes speno a week over one
| entence. Addison was so particular that
| he would stop the press to insert an epithet
/ or even comma; and Montesquieu, allud-
| ing in letter to one of his works saws to a
/ correspondent, You will read it in a 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 short copy of verses; and there is
a poem of ten lines in Walters works
| which, he has himself informed Us,
took him 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 aud Boileau. Even Macauay,
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.
There is good tale told of Malherbe, the
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 it
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 new bride; and was, coRse-
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 |
VIA al loa hon
verbal correctness that every poem he CON- |
posed is said to have passed successively |
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 yield |
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 filing out the |
details. The great French novelist Balzac
followed this method. He sent off to the
printer the skeleton of the intended ro-
nance, leaving pages of blank paper between
for 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 laDoriously complet.
ed his book Goodwin wrote his 'Caleb
Williams" MISUNDERSTANDING that is to
say, with the last chapter, and working on
to the first. 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
M rH n, |
divine; Bishop Horne, Warburton, Hurd
and many others kept commonplace books.
which may account for the copious and ap-
posite 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-
tions OF classical authors with very broad
margins, and put down the observations
which might occur to HIM in the course of
his readiDg-which is the secret of his lavish
erudition. Pope scribbled 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
bis finger nail, hence the marvellous diver.
sity OF feature in his infinite galleries of por-
traits. Swift would lie in bed in the morn
ing thinking of wit for the day. and The
odore Hook generally "made up his inn
Promptus the night BEFORE" Washington
Irving was fond of taking his portfolio out !
into the fields and laboriously manipulating
his graceful periods while swinging on a
stile. Wordsworth and De Quincy did the q
same 1t would be easy To multiply in {
stances OF the pain and labor expended on {
compositions which to all appearance bear q
no traces of such effort
But it is now time to reverse the picture, /
and to mention meritorious pieces produced (
against time and with extraordinary facility. I
Lucil1us, the Roman satirist, wrote with q
such ease that he used to boast that he could l
turn off 20O verses while standing on one c
eg. EnDius was quite as fluent OF Shake 4
'peare we are told, "His mind and hand o
vent together, snd what he thought he ut Il
cred with that easiness that we (the editors U
4 the First Foiio) have scarce received from u
lin, blot in his papers," When the fits of a
aspiration we're on Milton his amanuensis ii
ould scarcely keep pace with the fast fow- G.