The daily morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven, Conn.) 1894-1907, 1903-10-10
How WRITER'S WORKED.
Continued from Eleventh Page.)

were all first draught. He did not even
read them over once before giving them
to the press. st do not draw well in
long traces he used to say: II need to
feel the clatter of the printing press at
my heels"
Sydney Smith was another rapid
writer. Unwearied in acquiring infor-
nation upon his theme, he wrote as he
talked, with the ease and dash of a man
of keen wit and high intelligence, never
pausing to file or polish his brilliant
and. witty periods. & Byron was annex
ceedingly rapid one might almost say.
a tempestuous writer. He had a vol
canic brain, and threw off 1.-THE Cor
sair" in ten days, at the rate of 200
lines day-an amazing feat-and pub
lished it with hardly a correction. Don
JUAN his masterpiece was written
mainly at night, with brandy and water
at his elbow. Writing with fury, he
condensed with phlegm," cutting down
his verse to one-half and polishing it
with great care. Dryden dashed off his
ode to st. Cecilia" at a sitting. Eliza
beth Barrett Browning executed Lady
Geraldine's Courtship," the finest of her
poems, in twelve hours. Voltairs wrote
his Olympic" in six days. On the
other hand, the fastidious Campbell,
although the author OF some Of the
most fiery lyrics, dawdled long over his
verse. A Waggish friend used gravely
to assert regarding the rareness and
painfulness of his poetic parturition
that one morning. he found the knocker
of his house tied up and the street COW
cred with straw. Gently ringing the
bell he inquired anxiously after the
poets health. THANK you,'' was the
reply, master is doing as well as could
be expected Good heavens! what
has happened to him?" why, sir, he
was this morning delivered of a coup
Lett 81
There is no doubt that in the vast
majority of cases the best literary work
is not dashed off at a heat, or without
agony of the author. What an amount
of toll, invention and correction did
each of Virgirs works exact from its
author! Seven years he spent upon his
"Georgics,' and twelve upon the
fAeneid," with which he was so far
dissatisfied that he tried to rise from
his deathbed to commit 1t to the flames.
There is said to be preserved at Fer
rara precious scrap of paper, on
which A.iosto wrote sixteen different
versions of one of his most famous
,stanzas. Alexander Pope, whether in
the vein or not, was one of the most
painstaking of poets. But when .the
portentous cub" as Bentley called him,
wrote from real aftiatus, as to feed
fat an ancient grtdge," with what
never-tiring patience he composed! He
blotted and erased; he polished and re-
polished; he grudged no pains to give
a keener edge to some cutting epigram
or to improve the flow Of his rhythm
What reader of French has not adj
mired the ease, limpidity and abandon
of Rousseau's style? Yet he blotted,
interlined and varied the sentences
which seem so simply constructed, with
more care than that with which his
father executed the fine work of his
most highly finished watches
There is not one. of my ma rluscrilts. y
= +->~-->-~-->--7--s
he says, which i have not been obliged
to transcribe four or five times before
sending it to the press. Some of my
periods l have turned or returned, in
my head for five or six nights before
they were fit to be put on paper