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

HOW GREAT MEN WORK.
One of the most interesting chapters
/ n literary history would, undoubtedly,
be that which should record the whims
and eccentricities of men ofgenius when
engaged in the active pursuit of their
calling. First, because it is ALWAYS
pleasant to know how works, which have
taught and delighted whole generations
of readers, have been produced; and
secondly, because such little personal
traits, if not directly instructive, are, at
any rate, suggestive and curious. But,
strange to say, this chapter remains I'M
written; and among all the " curiosities
OF literature" these, the greatest of all
its curiosities, are by some inadvertency
passed over unnoticed. Such an omis-
sion is very much to be regretted, for
the author possessed singular qualifca-
tons for the task, as well from his enor-
nous reading as from his custom of
collecting and noting down such minu-
ti1 when he encountered them in scat
tered biographical or photographed
notices, where alone they can be found
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, illus
trated the old proverb 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, as a rule, the
writings of such men, except in the case
of Shakespeare, are not so valuable as
they might have been, and are married
by crudities which might otherwise
have been finished beauties, by deformi-
ties 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 hui
morously compared himself to a She
bear, who ticks her cubs into shape 1t
took him three years to compose his ten
short eclogues; seven years to elaborate
his Georges which comprise little
more than two thousand 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 indefati-
gable, and there are single odes in his
works which must have cost him months
of labor. Lucretius's one poem repre-
sents the toll of whole life; and so
careful was Plato in the niceties of YER
bal collocation, that the first sentence
in his g 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 chapter of his work three times
before he could please himself; and
John Foster, the essayist, would some
times spend week over one sentence.
Addison was so particular that he
would stop the press to insert an epithet,
or even q comma; and Montesquieu,
abiding in letter to one of his works,
says to a correspondent, You will
read it in few hours, but the labor eX-
pended on it has whitened my hair"
nc SItdU EIcuCu CIltlC, Que. -D6llN Z, eN-
pended incredible pains on every word,
and two or three octave pages often
represented whole weeks incessant
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 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 fluency,
did not disdain the application of the
file; and there are certain passages in
the first chapter of his history which
represent months of patient revision
There is a good tale told of Malherbe
the French poet, which illustrates very
amusingly the elaborate care he took
with his poems. A certain noblemar
of his acquaintance had lost his wife
and was anxious that Malherbe should
dedicate an ode to her memory, anC
condole with him in verse on the los.
he had sustained. Malherbe complied
but was so fastidious in his composition
that it was three years before the elepy
was completed. Just before he sent i
in, he was intensely chagrined to fine
that his noble friend had solaced him
self with u new bride; and was, conse
quently, in no humor to be pestereC
with an elepy on his old one. The nm