The Pulaski citizen. [volume] (Pulaski, Tenn.) 1866-current, 1881-11-10
Literary Men.


= The personal habits of authors Away
t possess more than a passing interest t
the general reader. We can recall som
OF these in the past, and wish that ever,
one who can automatically add to tn
$ same wosld do Sc. John Calvin com
e menced his daily studies at five in tn
D morning, reading and writing in be-
. tor hours together. If business re
quired him to go out he would dfesl
D and attend to It, but before resuminI
e his literary labor would again retire Il
his bed. Cardinal Richelieu, who wa
} dramatist as we'll as prime minister o.
/ France, usually went to bed at clever
O'Clock, slept three hours, then rose
dressed and wrote industriously. unit
breakfast time, eight o'clock in the
morning. During the day he never
touched his pen, except to sign docu-
ment, often passing hours playing with
his eats, OF which animals he was re-
markably fond. Button, the natural
ist, rose early and worked perpetually
His great "Stadies OF Nature" cost him
fifty years of labor, and he recopied the
entire work nearly twenty times He
composed in y singular manner, writ
ing ON large sized sheets OF paper, ruled
In five distinct columns. In the first
he wrote down his first thoughts, in the
| second he corrected, enlarged and
pruned, and so on, until he had reached
the fifth column, in which he finally
formed the sentences as he intended to
have them remain permanently. But
| even then he would often alter and re-
compose, and was known to have devo-
ted fourteen hours to find a proper word
to round off a period, but when his
work was done IL was well done.
|. julius Scaliger, the celebrated author
ana CRITIC, wrote with such accuracy
That his manuscript and the printed
copy correspOnded page FIR page and
line for line. Malherbe, the father OF
French poetry, tOrmented himself with
slowness.and was engaged rather in per-
feeting than in producing. Balzac would
often spend week on a page to make
it perfect, and the English poet Gray
composed after the same fashion. The
manuscript of Tasso is almost illegible
from the number of corrections Pope's
copy was open to the same objection.
Ya1gelas was thirty years on his Quin-
tus Curtlus; Hume spent half his life in |
retouching sentences and making cor
rections; FenelOn, on the other hand, |
wrote rapidly and rarely altered line D.; |
Gibbon, the historion, did the same;
Adam Smith dictated to an amanuensis, |
and seldom altered a word. Virgil, |
again, was slow, labOrious, oVer-care- |
ful, consuming ten years in writing his /
Atneid, and then pronounced it unfin-
ished. Dumas, the elder, dictated al
most altogether to an amanuensis, and,
If correctly reported, to more than one
at time; but this we doubt. He en-
ployed clever authors, retouched their
stories with his peculiar skill, made
4 h q ~ Il IL |
at great profit to bear his
own name. Pascal, when he wrote his
famous "PrOvincial Letters" in 1886,
devoted three weeks to
single letter, and then grudgingly sent
them to the printer. Addison was in
tensely solicitous in proof reading, while
the poets Savage and Armstrong felt
fortunes over a single typographical
Cuyier, who raised comparative anat-
Omy to science, never had occasion to
copy his manuscript, though he COM
posed very rapidly. With him the
proper words seemed to fall always into
the proper places, everything being ar
ranged in his mind in a most orderly
and systematic manner. Bossuet, the
famous French divine, who left fifty
volumes in his own manuscript, rose at
daylight uniformly, drank a cup of
strong black coffee, and wrote until he
gave out from sheer fatigue and could
no longer hold the pen. Then he
would take food and go to sleep, to
awake and repeat the process. Nicole,
.he distinguished French moralist, like
Newton, would half starVe himself be-
lore sitting down to literary labor, in
order that his brain might be clear, and
ne was so timid as to avoid the streets
If Paris, even to take necessary eyer
Use, being in constant dread that tile
right fall from roof upon his head.
His most important work is entitled
Moral Essays and Theological Instruc- !
ions,' contained in a score of volumes.
Erasmus, the profound scholar and vo-
luminous author, composed much in she
light time, and in the day kept closet !.
ID, or, at least, very large portion of
he time, in dread lest he should, in /!
,assing through the streets, come in the
leigh borhood of fish, either being
cooked or raw, which would throw him
into oonyulsionsl The singu-
ar antipathy of the Swedish Astrono- Z
ner Tycho Brahe, also an industrious d
Iuthor, occurs to us in this connection. 5
When he came in sight of a fox he in :
family became paralyzed, and would =
equire days OF perfect quiet in bed to
position while writing was peculiar, re- q
naming upon his knees and resting \
lis manuscript upon his bed. :
Bancroft, the historian, is a very slow, I
tut patient writer, concentrating and h
an immense number OF q
authorities into single sentence; Pres \
ett was OF the same hahitj Holmes '
writes and rewrites, often many times, 7
before he is able to satisfy himself, and q
o does Longfellow. Tennyson is said :
o have rewritten Locksley Hall fifty 3
lines before he sent it to the printer a
md is liable to alter his proof sheets so +
hat the matter has often to be entirely n
eset by the compositOr. Poe's manu- o
cript was like print, it was so carefully q
prepared, and If it was connected story 4
t was written upon roll of paper, sheet
Ifter sheet being pasted one upon an ,
'ther until the whole was finished. N.
?. Willis wrote an elegant hand, and
'ery rarely changed a word or sentence
n his prose composition; he was also a Il
Tery rapid producer. Whittier never I
)uts pen to paper unless he has we'll
lefined object in view, and then writes
EASILY and gracefully, his handwriting d
,eing most remarkably clear and correct q
n every particular. Emerson always
wrote very slowly, but what he pro- =
luces Is for all time. Dickens and
Thackeray wrote rapidly, but 10th
covered their paper with erasures and 2
Bulwer Lytton wrote Q
lear and correct manuscript, but never c
permitted himself to write more than q
hree hours of the twenty-four, yet his
yolumes are many. Perhaps this hasty
glance at the peculiarities of literary 5
men may lead others to pursue the !
heme TO a fuller and more satisfactory !
Measure.
Various Causes