--a line which, Stephens observed on hearing it, was "a fine line, but
wanting something." Keats thought over it for a little, then cried out, "I
have it," and wrote in its place:
A thing of beauty is a joy for ever.
Nor is this an exceptional example of the studied miracles of Keats. The
most famous and, worn and cheapened by quotation though it is, the most
beautiful of all his phrases--
magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn--
did not reach its perfect shape without hesitation and thinking. He
originally wrote "the wide casements" and "keelless seas":
the wide casements, opening on the foam
Of keelless seas, in fairy lands forlorn.
That would probably have seemed beautiful if the perfect version had not
spoiled it for us. But does not the final version go to prove that
Shelley's assertion that "when composition begins, inspiration is already
on the decline" does not hold good for all poets? On the contrary, it is
often the heat of labour which produces the heat of inspiration. Or rather
it is often the heat of labour which enables the writer to recall the heat
of inspiration. Ben Jonson, who held justly that "the poet must be able by
nature and instinct to pour out the treasure of his mind," took care to
add the warning that no one must think he "can leap forth suddenly a poet
by dreaming he hath been in Parnassus." Poe has uttered a comparable
warning against an excessive belief in the theory of the plenary
inspiration of poets in his _Marginalia_, where he declares that "this
untenable and paradoxical idea of the incompatibility of genius and _art_"
must be "kick[ed] out of the world's way." Wordsworth's saying that poetry
has its origin in "emotion recollected in tranquillity" also suggests that
the inspiration of poetry is an inspiration that may be recaptured by
contemplation and labour. How eagerly one would study a Shakespeare
manuscript, were it unearthed, in which one could see the shaping
imagination of the poet at work upon his lines! Many people have the
theory--it is supported by an assertion of Jonson's--that Shakespeare
wrote with a current pen, heedless of blots and little changes. He was, it
is evident, not one of the correct authors. But it seems unlikely that no
pains of rewriting went to the making of the speeches in _A Midsummer
Night's Dream_ or Hamlet's address to the skull. Shakespeare, one feels,
is richer than any other author in the beauty of first thoughts. But one
seems to perceive in much of his work the beauty of second thoughts too.
There have been few great writers who have been so incapable of revision
as Robert Browning, but Browning with all his genius is not a great
stylist to be named with Shakespeare. He did indeed prove himself to be a
great stylist in more than one poem, such as _Childe Roland_--which he
wrote almost at a sitting. His inspiration, however, seldom raised his
work to the same beauty of perfection. He is, as regards mere style, the
most imperfect of the great poets. If only Tennyson had had his genius! If
only Browning had had Tennyson's desire for golden words!
It would be absurd, however, to suggest that the main labour of an author
consists in rewriting. The choice of words may have been made before a
single one of them has been written down, as tradition tells us was the
case with Menander, who described one of his plays as "finished" before he
had written a word of it. It would be foolish, too, to write as though
perfection of form in literature were merely a matter of picking and
choosing among decorative words. Style is a method, not of decoration, but
of expression. It is an attempt to make the beauty and energy of the
imagination articulate. It is not any more than is construction the
essence of the greatest art: it is, however, a prerequisite of the
greatest art. Even those writers whom we regard as the least decorative
labour and sorrow after it no less than the æsthetes. We who do not know
Russian do not usually think of Tolstoy as a stylist, but he took far more
trouble with his writing than did Oscar Wilde (whose chief fault is,
indeed, that in spite of his theories his style is not laboured and
artistic but inspirational and indolent). Count Ilya Tolstoy, the son of
the novelist, published a volume of reminiscences of his father last year,
in which he gave some interesting particulars of his father's energetic
struggle for perfection in writing:
When _Anna Karénina_ began to come out in the _Russki Vyéstnik_ [he
wrote], long galley-proofs were posted to my father, and he looked
them through and corrected them. At first, the margins would be
marked with the ordinary typographical signs, letters omitted,
marks of punctuation, and so on; then individual words would be
changed, and then whole sentences; erasures and additions would
begin, till in the end the proof-sheet would be reduced to a mass
of patches, quite black in places, and it was quite impossible to
send it back as it stood because no one but my mother could make
head or tail of the tangle of conventional signs, transpositions,
and erasures.
My mother would sit up all night copying the whole thing out
afresh.
In the morning there lay the pages on her table, neatly piled
together, covered all over with her fine, clear handwriting, and
everything ready, so that when "Lyóvotchka" came down he could send
the proof-sheets out by post.
My father would carry them off to his study to have "just one last
look," and by the evening it was worse than before; the whole thing
had been rewritten and messed up once more.
"Sonya, my dear, I am very sorry, but I've spoilt all your work
again; I promise I won't do it any more," he would say, showing her
the passages with a guilty air. "We'll send them off to-morrow
without fail." But his to-morrow was put off day by day for weeks
or months together.
"There's just one bit I want to look through again," my father
would say; but he would get carried away and rewrite the whole
thing afresh. There were even occasions when, after posting the
Proofs, my father would remember some particular words next day and
correct them by telegraph.
There, better than in a thousand generalizations, you see what the
artistic conscience is. In a world in which authors, like solicitors, must
live, it is, of course, seldom possible to take pains in this measure.
Dostoevsky used to groan that his poverty left him no time or chance to
write his best as Tolstoy and Turgenev could write theirs. But he at least
laboured all that he could. Novel-writing has since his time become as
painless as dentistry, and the result may be seen in a host of books that,
while affecting to be fine literature, have no price except as
merchandise.