Vermont phÅ“nix. [volume] (Brattleboro, Vt.) 1834-1955, 1880-04-16

tor, never able to sacrifice his desire to mount
the tribune to his dignity as Presidents of
Button, the naturalist, to whom work was n
necessity, and who would sit at his desk in
the morning from nine till two, and again in
the evening from FIVE till nine daily for for
ty years Of Baron Bunsen studying at his
desk, as his wife tells us, from daylight till
dark, "in the full enjoyment Of giving the
public piece Of his mind :" of Buckle, the
historian, devoting ten hours day for seven
teen years TO his History of Civilization or,
TO come to men of greater moderation though
not Of less renown, Of Milton deyoting his
morning hours to study and his afternoons to
music, and friends Of Dean Milman, count.
ing his mornings precious, and at the age of
seventy-iye commencing his work at the ear
ly hour of seven. But time must be taken TO
speak of one of the most methodical pains
taking men of genius which this or any age
has ever shown, Charles Dickens. From the
time when, as reporter in the House of Com
mons, he sat in the dingy little gallery Of
Parliament House night after night, with his
paper on his knee, distancing every compel
itor in the painstaking accuracy Of his report
to the time when, in the height Of his fame,
he shut himself up every day from nine till
two in the little Swiss chalet across the road
at Gad's Hill, no man ever did more than he
to prove his own definition of genius, that it
is only the capacity for taking pains.
Those who watched him said that he wrote
and ro-wrote with the most tirclcss persist
ence in order to bring his sentences to that
perfection, where, as Coleridge says OF Mil
ton, you could 10 more thrust word from
its place than II stone from cathedral wall
And yet he never seemed to have satisfied
himself. Those of Us who were privileged
to hear him read when he was last in this
country, will remember that his librettos diff
fered largely from the text Of his latest
editions, and different in other than those
parts where the story had been pieced to-
gether and condensed, and differed always
for the better. 1t was happier in the express
sion of thought and more transparent as a
medium Of communication. We may well be-
lieye that it took him three months of hard la
Dor to get up one of his stories for public reel
tation. Arthur Helps has counted it one Of the
most remarkable evidences Of Dickens genius,
that man so precise and painstaking in his
habits could ever have depicted so disorder
ly and reckless a character as Dick Swiveller,
and have done it with such a loving hand as to
make us all enamored Of the tender hearted
lover of the Marchoness H. ventures the
opinion that Sir Walter Scott would have
failed in the attempt that in all the charac-
ters which he has made attractive, there are
apparent traces Of himself, either in nobility
of nature or canny shrewdness. Well, pos
sibly Dickens was the greater genius of the
two. 1t cannot be denied however that Scott
was infinitely the greater man The lately
published letters Of the tenant of Gad's Hill
reveal a character that cannot be compared
with the hero Of Abbotsford. | cite Dickens
the genius, tonight. and not Dickens the
man, the egotist. the comedian, the lover of
horse-play; and say that in his methods of
work he is to be classod among the most
striking proofs of the saying Of George Eliot,
that genius is but little more than great
capacity for receiving discipline"
/ pass now from the formal habits to illus
trations of the discipline of workers In an
address given by Mr.. Huxley at recent dis
tributon Of prizes in the University OF Lon
don, he told the boys that there were three
things especially useful for success in life in
tellcctual quickness, industry, and the power
of enduring fatigue. The latter he would rank
preGminent. Often mans future hangs
upon the ability to do an excessive amount
Of work in given time We're he to ask
good fairy to endow his boy, he would ask
first for a broad, deep chest, and a stomach
of whose existence he should never know
anything.
How many hours a day do you work -
asked Theodore Parker of Bauer, the Ger.
man nationalist. "Ah 80 was the reply, "on-
ly eighteen. "Only eighteen" repeats
rockingham, who tells the story in hi. life
of Parker, why, even Parker himself had
never equallrd that" But there are others
who have, If we may believe reports Har-
ret Martineau would sometimes write as
many as eighteen hours day. And writing,
We must remember, is work in which virtue
goes out Of one. ':If there is any act" says
Prof. Phelps, (which may be compared with
the creative act of God, making something
out of nothing, it is the act of original com
position Let those who think the man or
the woman, who sits at desk in "a comforta-
BILE study all day long, has m easy time of it,
for them to try the experiment and take their
ease in the same way. Pen, ink and paper
are cheap. Let them try it. Farjeon tainted
as lie wrote the death of the heroine in Josh
uR Marvel; and Dickens walked the streets
of Paris all night after the death of Paul
Donlbey. That was the passage which mas
tered Thackeray. Rushing down to the Office
of Punch with the number in hand he dash
ed it upon the table saying There's no
writing against such power as this-one has
no chance. Read that; it is unsurpassed, it
is stupendous." Eighteen hours of creative
work, k,-what greater strain upon human en-
durance could be imagined! Yet Balzac
equaed it at times as | have shown, and his
work was little if any inferior to Dickens.
Caleb Cushing could read law reports six
teen hours day, for the month together
and never forget AN important fact. After
his appointment as Associate Justice of the
Supreme Court of Mass, he proceeded to
''cram" the statute law of the State, then
comprised in sixty octave volumes of eight
hundred pages each. He went through it in
nineteen days, and he remembered it, too.
A striking parallel, / have often thought,
might be drawn between this eminent iurist
and that great English worker of the early
part of this century, Lord Brougham. Both
men apparently knew no limit to their pow
ers of application Brougham in his early
manhood wrote whole number of the Edin-
burgh Review, his articles ranging from one
on the operation of lithotomy 10 one on the
music of the Chinese When he was ap-
Dointed Lord Chancellor of ENGLAND a friand
remarked, 'if he only knew little law he
would be omniscient,' Yet before eleven
months had passed he had cleared the Chan