The Democratic press. [volume] (Ravenna, O. [Ohio]) 1868-1901, 1881-04-21
Moods of Authors.

With the best advantages, with per-
feet seclusion and every facility for the
concentration and marshalling of
thought, authors, says the London
Globe, are notoriously subject to strange
freaks of humor, which render them in
tellectually PROSTATE and utterly unable
to command their known and tried
powers. The muse of poetry is the fick-
lest of jades, as everybody knows, but
the muse -Gf there be one) of prose is
scarcely whit more staunch or trust
worthy. Perhaps Thackeray is the best
modern example of the vagaries of mood
in writer's. For weeks together he could
not put pen to paner to do anything like
Justice to himself, and for this misfort-
une Mr.. Anthony Trollope rather un-
dustry. ''Unsteadfast, idle, changeable
of purpose are epithets which the less
er throws at the greater novelist, mere
ly because as he says, Thackeray ''could
not bring himself to do an allotted task
day after day." '.Idle' seems a vulgar
accusation to hurl at man of Thack-
eray's genius and achievements. The
writing of books like ''Pendennis'' and
ssThe Newcomes'' can scarcely be looked
upon as ''day-work'' in the sense in
which blacksmith's labor would be
so considered.
If such an author was idle, SO was
Dickens, who frequently had to give up
his work in despair, in spite of the
strongest determination to master a
hostile mood. 81 am utterly lost in
misery" he writes, at a time when his
strength was the most vigorous, ''and
can do nothing, have been reading
OLIVER .Pickwick,' and tNickleby' to
get my thoughts together for the new
effort, but all in vain" Over and over
again he exclaims in his brief notes to
Mr.. Foster that 1.-THE fit is not on him,
and he must go for a ride or walk.
From Italy he writes one autumn, just
as he was about to start on the Christ
mas book: Il have got my paper and
inkstand and figures now and can think
I have begun to do SO every morning
with a business-like air of the Christ
mas book" Again, later: 81 am sadly
strange and can not settle. You will
have lots of hasty notes from me while
l am at work; but you know your man.
Dickens was always nervously exact in
the arrangement of his writing room,
and in one of his letters from a strange
place he relates how he had to '.alter the
disposition of the furniture before he
could write a line.
Even Milton is said to have admitted
that his faculties were much stronger
at some times than at others, and Dry
den used to diet himself for task in
poetry, eating raw meat to inspire vivid
dreams. 1t is unfortunately true that
he resorted to even less excusible stimu-
lants, though long list of other inn
mortals were wont to overcome the shy
ness of their genius by similar means.
Byron wrote some of his looser poems
under the influence of gin. Coleridge,
De Quincy: and Shadwell prodded the
muse with opium; Sheridan, having a
good deal of the Charles Surface in him,
did good work with aid of brandy; Ben
johnson was assisted by canary" and
Eschylus is said to have been invariably
Intoxicated when he wrote. The great
achievements which some authors have
produced at single sitting show that
moods have played an important part
in literature.