The Indiana State sentinel. [volume] (Indianapolis) 1868-1895, 1878-05-01

traits. Swift would lie in bed in the morn
ing thinking Of wit for the day." and The
odore Hook generally made mp his inn
pr0mptus the night before" Washington
Irving was fond of taking his portfolio out
into the fields and laboriously manipulating
his graceful periods while swinging on
stile. Wordsworth and De Quincy did the
same. 1t would be easy To multiply in
stances of the pain and labor expended on
compositions which to all appearance bear
no traces of such effort. ltttf.a
But it is now time to reverse the 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 200 verses while standing on one
leg. EnDius was quite as fluent. OF Shake
speare told, "His mind and hand
went together, and what he thought he ut
tered with that easiness that we lthe editors
of the First Folio) have scarce received from
him blot in his papers" When the fits of.
inspiration were on Milton mis- amanuensis
could scarcely keep pace with the fast flow-
ing 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 Span
ish stage with upwards of 1000 original
dramas, and Hallam calculates that during
the course of his life he ''reeled Off upwards
of p, 800, 600 lines. OF English writers. per-
'haps the most fluent and easy have been
Dryden and Sir Walter Scott. In one short
year Dryden produced four of his greatest
works, namely, the first part of "Absalom
and Achitophel !" The Medal, )" MAC Flick
noe" his share in the second part of "Absa-
lom and Achitophel" and the "Religio
Laici." He was less than three years in
translating the whole of Virgil. He COM
posed his elaborate parallel between
poetry and painting in twelve mornings.
"Alexander's Feast was struck out at a
single sitting Everybody knows the extra
ordinary facility of Sir Walter Scott-how
his amanuensls, when he employed one,
could not keep pace with the breathless
speed with which he dictated his marvellous
romances. If we can judge from the many
original manuscripts of his novels and
poems which have been preserved to us, it
would seem that he scarcely ever recast
sentence or altered word when it was com
mitted to paper. The effect of this is that
both Dryden and Scott have left mass of
writings valuable for the genius with which
they are instinct, but defaced with errors,
with grammatical blunders and with many
pleonasms and tautologies, the consequence
of their authors not practicing what Pope
calls
The first and greatest art, the art to blot.
DR.. Johnsons "Rasselasn was written in a
week, to defray the expenses of his mothers
funeral. Horace Walpole wrote nearly all
the Castle of Ontranto' at a sitting which
terminated not by mental fatigue, but by
the fingers becoming too weary to close on
the pen. Beckford's celebrated "Vathek"
was composed by the uninterrupted exertion
of three whole days and two whole nights,
during which time the ecstatic author sup
ported himself by copious draughts of wine.
What makes the feat more wonderful is that
it was written in French, an acquired Ian /
guage, for Beckford was, of course, an Eng |
lishman.
When we learn that Ben Jonson com. |
pleted his highly wrought comedy of the |
''Alchymist" in six weeks, and that DIR. John
son could throw off forty-eight octave pages /
of such finished composition as his "LIfe |
of Savage" at a sitting, one is indeed lost In |
bewildering admiration, and perhaps half |
inclined to doubt the authors word.