Grant County herald. [volume] (Lancaster, Wis.) 1850-1968, 1885-01-08
THE LABORs OF GENIUS.
Piato's Thirteen Versions or a Sentence
Tennyson's Struggle With Meter
Bret Harte and Bryant H.aborfous
Writers,

The great Plato, whose thoughts
seemed to come so easy, is said to have
toiled over his manuscripts, working
with slow and tedious elaboration. The
opening sentence of 1.-THE Republic,
on the authors tablets was found to be
written in some thirteen different YER
siens. When death called him from
his work the great philosopher was en-
gagged at his desk ..combing and curl
ing and weaving and unweaving his
writings after variety of fashions
The celebrated French critic, Sainte-
Beuye, was accustomed to devote six
days to the preparation of single one
of his weekly articles. A large portion
OF his time was passed in the retirement
of his chamber, to which, on such oc-
casions. no individual-with the excep-
ton of his favorite servant-was allow
ed to enter under any circumstances
whatever. Here he wrote those critic
al papers which carried captive the
heart OF France, and filed with Won
der the cultivated mind everywhere.
The historian Gibbon, in speaking of
the manner in which he wrote his de
cline and Fall of the Roman Empire
said: "Many experiments were made
before could reach the middle tone
between dull tone and a rhetorical
defamation. Three times did | COM
pose the first chapter, and twice the
second and third, before | was tolera-
bly, satisfied with their effect. Lamb
toiled most laboriously over his essays.
These papers, which long ago became
as classics in the English language.
which are replete with the most delicate
fancies, were composed with the most
exacting nicely. Yet their author is
regarded the world over as possessed of
genius of high order. La Roehefou-
cauld was occupied for the space of fif-
teen years in preparing for publication
his little work called ..Maxims,n re-
writing many of them more than thirty
times.
The great Belzac, after he had made
a plan of a novel, and had, after the
most laborious research, gathered to-
gether the materials which he was to
embody in it, would lock himself in his
private apartment, shut out all the
light of day,.and then, by the aid of his
study lamp, he would toll day and
night over the work before him. His
servant, knowing SO well his peculiar
habits, would attend to his every want,
bringing him the necessary food with
which to sustain his physical needs,
and thus he would toll on and on, until
finally, with his task completed, as he
thought, he would come forth from his
retirement looking more dead than
oil l. l. l. Il
not be altogether satisfactory to him,
after all, for again he would seek the
seclusion of his chamber to rearrange
and make more perfect that which he
had before supposed wholly complete.
Then, too, when in the hands of the
printer he would be as apt as not to
alter, in one way and another, the
manuscript, until both printer and pub
lisherwere on the verge of despair. King
lakes beautiful ..Eothen" was rewrit-
ten half dozen times before it was
given to q publisher for consideration.
Tennyson's song, Come Into the Gar
den, Maud" was rewritten some fifty
times before it gave complete satisfac-
ton to the author.
Coming to the gifted Addison, whose
diction is full of such grace and sim
piioity, so much as to create envy, yet
admiration, in the mind of every writer
who has flourished since his day, we
find that the great author wrote with
the most painful deliberation. 1t is
narrated that the press was stopped
again and again, after whole edition
OF the Spectator had been thrown off,
n order that its author might make
slight change in a sentence.
Tom Moore, with all his wonderful
brilliancy, considered it doing very
well if he wrote fifty lines of his .Lalla
Rookh'' in a week. Hawthorne was
slow in composing. Sometimes he
could write only what amounted to
half a dozen pages week, often only
lew lines IN the same space of time,
and, alas, he would frequently go to
his chamber and take his pen, only to
lind himself wholly unable to perform
any literary work. The author of
pleasures of hope'' was slow of
thought, and consequently his mode of
composition was toilsome in the high
est degree. He wrote extremely eau
tiously, weighing and shaping the
effect of each particular line before he
pcIIHlbteu IL TO stand.
Bret Harte, whose creations read as
II they had come from his brain with
out flaw or hindrance, showing bril-
liancy of thought, with the grace of
the artist, is still another writer who
passes days and weeks on a short story
or poem before he is ready to deliver it
into the hands of the printer So, too,
with Bryant. Though in reality the
sum total OF his poetry might be in
cluded in a small volume, so few are
his lyrics we cannot fail to be impressed
with the truth of the statement when
we are told that even these few gems
OF verse cost our late Wordsworth
hard toll to bring into being, and en-
dow with the splendor of Immortality
Boston Iraceter.