Who does not enjoy recalling these silent friends, favorite authors
grown dear to us by age and long association? Some one has said that
authors, like coins, grow dearer as they grow old. Indeed, Samuel
Rogers, the banker and poet, declared that when friends at his famous
"breakfasts" were praising a new book, he forthwith began to re-read an
old one. All these writers were double-sided, so to speak; they had
their book natures and their human natures, and it is when we prefer to
contemplate them in the latter aspect that we like them best. Carlyle
calls them "the vanguard in the march of mind, the intellectual
backwoodsmen reclaiming from the idle wilderness new territory for the
thought and activity of their happier brethren." It is true that we can
form but a partial judgment of authors by their books, their motives
being not always as pure as we are inclined to believe.[41] A traitor
like Bolingbroke is quite capable of writing a captivating book on
patriotism; and it has been said if Satan were to write one, it would be
upon the advantages of virtue.
It is certain he has ever shown such a hearty appreciation of virtue
that he holds in highest estimation his success in corrupting it.
Examples flash across the memory. There was Sir Thomas More advocating
toleration, while he was himself a fierce persecutor; Sallust declaring
against the licentiousness of his age, yet addicted to habitual
debaucheries; Byron assuming a misanthropy which he never felt; and
Cowley boasting of his mistresses, though he had not the courage even to
address one. Smollett's descriptions and scenes were often indelicate,
though he was himself in that respect a faultless man. "As a rule, the
author who is not in genius far above his productions must be a
second-rate one at best," says Bulwer-Lytton. Sometimes we detect
striking likenesses between the author and his works. Goldsmith, for
instance, was the same hero to low-bred women, and the same coward to
ladies, that he depicts in his charming comedy. It is difficult,
however, in the light of Handel's inspired music, to realize what an
animal nature possessed him in his every-day mood,--what a glutton he
was at table; or to reconcile the sublime strains of Mozart with his
trivial personality.[42] Still, Buffon persistently declares, "Le style
c'est l'homme."
Addison, recognized as the purest and most perspicuous writer of the
English language, though exercising such mastership of the pen, had no
oral ability, and rarely attempted to talk in social circles. He said of
himself that though he had a hundred pounds in the bank, he had no small
coin in his pocket.[43]
Dr. Johnson and Coleridge were famous for their colloquial facility, but
both of these were rather lecturers than talkers, however delightful in
this respect the latter may have been. Johnson during his life was
undoubtedly more of a power as a talker than as a writer. It has been
said that Scott talked more poetry and Edmund Burke more eloquence than
they ever wrote. Emerson thought that "better things are said, more
incisive, more wit and insight are dropped in talk and forgotten, than
gets into books." E. H. Chapin and H. W. Beecher have talked sounder and
more brilliant theology than they ever preached from the pulpit.
Spontaneous thoughts come from our inner consciousness; sermons and
essays, from the cooler action of the brain. Coleridge, on first meeting
Byron, entertained the poet with one of his monologues, wherein he
ascended into the seventh heaven upon wings of theology and metaphysics.
Leigh Hunt described the scene to Charles Lamb, and expressed his wonder
that Coleridge should have chosen so unsympathetic an auditor. "Oh, it
was only his fun," explained Lamb; "there's an immense deal of quiet
humor about Coleridge!" Wordsworth speaks of him as the "rapt one, with
the godlike forehead," the "heaven-eyed creature." Hazlitt says that "no
idea ever entered the mind of man, but at some period or other it had
passed over his head with rustling pinions." Talfourd writes of seeing
"the palm-trees wave, and the pyramids tower, in the long perspective of
his style." When Coleridge once asked Lamb, "Charles, did you ever hear
me preach?" he received the quiet reply, "I never heard you do anything
else." Rogers tells us: "Coleridge was a marvellous talker. One morning,
when Hookham Frere also breakfasted with me, Coleridge talked for three
hours without intermission about poetry, and so admirably that I wish
every word he uttered had been written down." Madame de Staël said of
him that he was great in monologue, but that he had no idea of dialogue.
Macaulay was also remarkable for his conversational powers, which were
greatly aided by an excellent memory. He has been accused of talking too
much; and Sydney Smith once said of him: "He is certainly more agreeable
since his return from India. His enemies might perhaps have said
before--though I never did so--that he talked rather too much; but now
he has occasional flashes of silence that make his conversation
perfectly delightful!" In a party in which eminent men are present, the
rule is said to be that, for good conversation, the number of talkers
should never be fewer than the Graces or more than the Muses. Goldsmith,
who wrote so charmingly and exhibited such a remarkable versatility with
the pen, could make no figure in conversation. Fox, Bentley, Burke,
Curran, and Swift were all brilliant talkers; Tasso, Dante, Gray, and
Dryden[44] were all taciturn. Of Ben Jonson it is said that he was
mostly without speech, sitting by the hour quite silent in society,
sucking in the wine and humor of his companions.
Sheridan had the reputation of being a brilliant conversationalist; but
we all know that many of his "impromptus" were laboriously prepared
beforehand, and that he was wont to lie in wait silently for half an
evening watching his opportunity to discharge the arrows of his polished
wit. One would be glad to learn how it was with Shakespeare in society.
He could hold his own in a controversy, however, as Thomas Fuller, in
his "Worthies of England," says, "Many were the wet-combats between him
and Ben Jonson:[45] which two I behold like a Spanish great galleon and
an English man-of-war; master Jonson, like the former, was built far
higher in learning; solid, but slow, in his performances. Shakespeare,
like the English man-of-war, lesser in bulk but lighter in sailing,
could turn with all tides, tack about, and take advantage of all winds
by the quickness of his wit and invention." Shakespeare himself has
said, "Silence is only commendable in a neat's tongue dried and a maid
not vendible;" but the ancient stoics thought that by silence they heard
other men's imperfections and concealed their own.
The diplomatist Metternich said he had never known more than ten or
twelve persons with whom it was pleasant to converse. Margaret Fuller
said Carlyle's talk was an amazement to her, though she was familiar
with his writings. His conversation, she declared, was a splendor
scarcely to be faced with steady eye. He did not converse--only
harangued. She thought him "arrogant and overbearing, but it was not the
arrogance of littleness, nor self-love, but rather the arrogance of some
old Scandinavian conqueror; it was his nature, the untamable impulse
that had given him power to crush the dragons. She was not led to love
or revere him, but liked him heartily,--liked to see him the powerful
smith, the Siegfried, melting all the old iron in his furnace till it
glows to a sunset red and burns you, if you senselessly go too
near."[46]
When Dr. Johnson was asked why he was not invited out to dine as
Garrick[47] was, he answered, as if it was a great triumph to him,
"Because great lords and ladies don't like to have their mouths
stopped!" He indulged a furious hatred to Americans, and whenever there
was an opportunity sneered at them even more bitterly than he did at
Scotchmen. It will be remembered that he thought something could be made
out of a Scotchman "if you caught him young;" but he would not admit
even this saving clause as regarded Americans. He said, "I am willing to
love all, all mankind, except an American." He called them "robbers and
pirates;" adding, "I'd burn and destroy them!"
These words were addressed to Miss Anna Seward, of Lichfield. It was in
the grammar school of this ancient cathedral town that Addison, Dr.
Johnson, and Garrick received their early education, and Johnson was a
native of the place. Miss Seward's father was the canon resident of
Lichfield Cathedral. In his family there was a beautiful young lady
named Honora Sneyd, a companion to his daughter. John André, a cultured
London youth, fell in love with Honora, and was tacitly accepted. The
young man was somewhat suddenly called back to the metropolis on
business, and a separation thus ensued which seemed to wean the lady's
affections from him, so that she soon after married a Mr. Edgeworth and
in the course of time became the mother of Maria Edgeworth, the
well-known novel-writer.[48] John André remained faithful to his first
love, and came to America carrying in his bosom a miniature of Honora
suspended from his neck. His sad fate during our Revolutionary War is
well known to all. He was the Major André whom Washington reluctantly
executed as a spy, and whose memorial is now conspicuous in Westminster
Abbey.
Peter Corneille, the great French dramatic poet, had nothing in his
exterior that indicated his genius. As to his conversational powers,
they were simply insipid, and never failed to weary all listeners.
Nature had endowed him with brilliant gifts, but forgot to grant him the
ordinary accomplishments. He did not even speak correct French, which he
never failed to write with perfection. When his friends represented to
him how much more he might please by not disdaining to correct these
trivial errors, he would smile and say, "I am none the less Peter
Corneille!" We learn from Rogers that in the early days of his
popularity Byron was quite diffident in society, or at least never
ventured to take part in the conversation. If any one happened to let
fall an observation which offended him, he never attempted to reply, but
treasured it up for days, and would then come out with some cutting
remarks, giving them as his deliberate opinion, the result of his
experience of the individual's character. Southey[49] was stiff,
reserved, sedate, and so wrapped up in a garb of asceticism that Charles
Lamb once stutteringly told him he was "m-made for a m-m-monk, but
somehow the co-co-cowl didn't fit."
Racine made this confidential confession to his son: "Do not think that
I am sought after by the great on account of my dramas; Corneille
composed nobler verses than mine, but no one notices him, and he only
pleases by the mouth of the actors. I never allude to my works when with
men of the world, but I amuse them about matters they like to hear. My
talent with them consists not in making them feel that I have any, but
in showing them that they have." The well-remembered saying about
Goldsmith's lack of conversational power is excellent because it was so
true; namely, that "he wrote like an angel and talked like poor
Poll."[50] Fisher Ames and Rufus Choate were distinguished for their
conversational powers. Stuart, the American painter, was remarkable in
this respect; and so were Washington Allston, Edgar A. Poe, Margaret
Fuller, and the late Caleb Cushing. The lady just named was considered
to be the best talker of her sex since Madame de Staël. Indeed, those
who knew her well said she talked even better than she wrote, which was
saying much.
Charles Sumner used to relate a talk in a company where Daniel Webster
was present. The question under discussion was what were the best means
of culture. Webster was silent until all had spoken. He then said:
"Gentlemen, you have overlooked one of the means of culture which I
consider of the first importance, and from which I have gained the most;
that is, good conversation."[51]
Whipple has said in one of his essays that "real, earnest conversation
is a kind of intellectual cannibalism, where strong minds feed on each
other and mightily enjoy the repast."
Charles Lamb's most sportive essays, which read as though they came
almost spontaneously from his pen, are known to have been the result of
intense brain labor. He would spend a whole week in elaborating a single
humorous letter to a friend. Lamb was so sensitive concerning
proof-reading as to be the dread of the printers. It is said of the
poet-laureate of England that he has been known to re-write a poem
twenty times and more before he was satisfied to give it to the printer.
Dickens, when writing a book, was accustomed to shut himself up for days
together, and to work with fearful energy until the task was completed;
after which he would come forth presenting the appearance of a person
recovering from a fit of illness. The free-and-easy spirit which
characterizes his pages affords no evidence of the travail through which
their author passed in giving them birth. Bulwer-Lytton took matters
much more philosophically. He always worked at pen-craft leisurely,
never more than three or four hours a day; and yet by carefully
observing a system the aggregate of his productions was very large.
Balzac, after thinking over a subject, would retire to his study and
write it out half a dozen times before he gave the manuscript to the
printer, whom he afterwards tormented to the very verge of exasperation
by his proof alterations. To come nearer to our own time, we may remark
that Longfellow, whose versification seems always to have flowed with
such ease and fluency from his pen, was a slow and painstaking producer,
sometimes altering and amending until the original draft of an essay or
poem was quite improved out of sight.
Dr. Channing nearly drove his printers crazy; after his
manuscript--almost illegible by corrections and interlineations--had
been returned to them with alterations, omissions, and additions on the
first proof-sheets, he would ponder over, alter, and amend three or four
successive proofs before he finally allowed the result to meet the
public eye,--a new edition involving another series of alterations. The
lyric which cost Tennyson the most trouble was "Come into the Garden,
Maud." It is said to have been held back from the public after it had
been a year in his hands, going through repeated processes of
alteration. What time indorses, requires time to create and finish. To
this determination of Tennyson to condense all his thoughts into the
smallest space, and never to expand when by patient labor he can
contract, we owe the few lines in which he states in the "Princess" the
whole nebular theory of the universe as expounded by Kant and Laplace;
and how much reflection must have been required to condense the
description of the fundamental defect of English law, on which volumes
have been written, as he has done in "Aylmer's Field:"--
"The lawless science of our law,
That codeless myriad of precedent,
That wilderness of single instances."
When we observe good workmanship, whether it be by a stone-mason, a
cabinet-maker, or a writer, we may be sure that it has cost much patient
labor. His biographer tells us that Moore thought ten or fifteen lines
in twenty-four hours a good day's accomplishment in poetry; and at this
rate he wrote "Lalla Rookh."[52] Wordsworth wrote his verses, laid them
aside for weeks, then, taking them up, frequently rewrote them a score
of times before he called them finished. Buffon's "Studies of Nature"
cost him fifty years of writing and re-writing before the work was
published. John Foster, the profound and eloquent English essayist,
often spent hours upon a single sentence. Ten years elapsed between the
first sketch of Goldsmith's "Traveller" and its final completion.
Rochefoucauld[53] spent fifteen years over his little book of Maxims,
altering some of them thirty times. Rogers admitted that he had more
than once spent ten days upon a single verse before he turned it to suit
him. Vaugelas, the great French scholar, devoted twenty years to his
admirable translation of "Quintus Curtius."
Some authors have produced with such rapidity as to approach
improvisation. Perhaps the most remarkable instance of this was in the
case of Lope de Vega, who composed and wrote a versified drama in a
single day, and is known to have done so for seven consecutive days.
Contemporary with Shakespeare and Cervantes, De Vega has left behind him
two thousand original dramas sparkling with vivacity of dialogue and
richness of invention. Soldier, duellist, poet, sailor, and priest, his
long life was one of intense activity and adventure.[54] The name of
Hardy, the French dramatic author and actor, occurs to us in this
connection; though an inferior genius to De Vega, he wrote over six
hundred original dramas. He was considered the first dramatic writer of
the days of Henry IV. and Louis XIII., before whom Hardy often appeared
upon the stage personating the heroes of his own dramas.
Prynne, the English antiquary, politician, and pamphlet-writer, sat down
early in the morning to his composition. Every two hours his man brought
him a roll and a pot of ale as refreshment; and so he continued until
night, when he partook of a hearty dinner. One of his pamphlets was
entitled "A Scourge for Stage-Players," which was considered so
scurrilous that the Star-Chamber sentenced him to pay a heavy fine, to
be exposed in the pillory, to lose his ears, and to be imprisoned for
life. He was finally released from prison. While he was confined in the
pillory, a pyramid of his offending pamphlets was made close at hand, to
windward of his position, and set on fire, so that the author was very
nearly choked to death by the smoke. He was almost as incessant and
inveterate a writer as Petrarch, and considered being debarred from pen
and ink an act more barbarous than the loss of his ears. However, he
partially obviated his want of the usual facilities by writing a whole
volume on his prison walls while confined in the Tower of London.
Byron wrote the "Corsair" in ten days, which was an average of nearly
two hundred lines a day,--a fact which he acknowledged to Moore with a
degree of shame. He said he would not confess it to everybody,
considering it to be a humiliating fact, proving his own want of
judgment in publishing, and the public in reading, "things which cannot
have stamina for permanent attention." The surpassing beauty of the
"Corsair," however, excuses all the author said or did in connection
with it. It may nevertheless be affirmed that, as a rule, no great work
has ever been performed with ease, or ever will be accomplished without
encountering the throes of time and labor. Dante, we remember, saw
himself "growing lean" over his "Divine Comedy." Mary Russell Mitford,
the charming English authoress, dramatist, poet, and novelist, who so
excelled in her sketches of country life, says of herself: "I write with
extreme slowness, labor, and difficulty; and, whatever you may think,
there is a great difference of facility in different minds. I am the
slowest writer, I suppose, in England, and touch and retouch
incessantly." Her life was one of constant labor and self-abnegation in
behalf of a worthless, selfish, and imperious father. He was a robust,
showy, wasteful profligate, and a gambler. A doctor by profession, he
was a spendthrift and sensualist by occupation. He contracted a venal
marriage with an heiress much older than himself, and after squandering
her entire fortune he fell back upon his daughter as the bread-winner
for the whole family. By a remarkable chance she became the possessor of
a great lottery prize, from which she realized twenty thousand pounds,
every penny of which her beastly father drank and gambled away. Still,
the devotion and industry of the daughter never waned for a moment. Her
patient struggles have placed her name on the roll of fame, while her
father's has sunk into deserved oblivion.
De Tocqueville wrote to his publishers: "You must think me very slow.
You would forgive me if you knew how hard it is for me to satisfy
myself, and how impossible it is for me to finish things incompletely."
Horace suggested that authors should keep their literary productions
from the public eye for at least nine years, which certainly ought to
produce "the well-ripened fruit of sage delay." After a labor of eleven
years Virgil pronounced his Æneid imperfect. This recalls the Italian
saying, "One need not be a stag, neither ought one to be a tortoise."
Tasso's manuscript, which is still extant, is almost illegible because
of the number of alterations which he made after having written it.
Montaigne, "the Horace of Essayists," could not be induced, so lazy and
self-indulgent was he, to even look at the proof-sheets of his writings.
"I add, but I correct not," he said.
The writer of these pages has seen the original draft of Longfellow's
"Excelsior," so interlined and amended to suit the author's taste as to
make the manuscript rather difficult to decipher. The poet wrote a
back-hand, as it is called; that is, the letters sloped in the opposite
direction from the usual custom, and as a rule his writing was
remarkably legible. Coleridge was very methodical as to the time and
place of his composition. He told Hazlitt that he liked to compose
walking over uneven ground, or making his way through straggling
branches of undergrowth in the woods; which was a very affected and
erratic notion, and might better have been "whipped out of him."[55]
Wordsworth, on the contrary, found his favorite place for composing his
verses in walking back and forth upon the smooth paths of his garden,
among flowers and creeping vines. Hazlitt, in a critical analysis of the
two poets, traces a likeness to the style of each in his choice of
exercise while maturing his thoughts,--which, it would seem to us, is a
subtile deduction altogether too fine to signify anything.
Charles Dibdin, the famous London song-writer and musician, whose
sea-songs as published number over a thousand, caught his ideas "on the
fly." As an example, he was at a loss for something new to sing on a
certain occasion. A friend was with him in his lodgings and suggested
several themes. Suddenly the jar of a ladder against the street
lamp-post under his window was heard. It was a hint to his fertile
imagination, and Dibdin exclaimed, "The Lamplighter! That's it;
first-rate idea!" and stepping to the piano he finished both song and
words in an hour, and sang them in public with great éclat that very
night, under the title of "Jolly Dick, the Lamplighter." Like nearly all
such mercurial geniuses, Dibdin was generous, careless, and improvident
in his habits, dying at last poor and neglected.
Dr. Johnson was so extremely short-sighted that writing, re-writing, and
correcting upon paper were very inconvenient for him; he was therefore
accustomed to revolve a subject very carefully in his mind, forming
sentences and periods with minute care; and by means of his remarkable
memory he retained them with great precision for use and final
transmission to paper. When he began, therefore, with pen in hand, his
production of copy was very rapid, and it required scarcely any
corrections. Boswell says that posterity will be astonished when they
are told that many of these discourses, which might be supposed to be
labored with all the slow attention of literary leisure, were written in
haste, as the moments pressed, without even being read over by Johnson
before they were printed. Sir John Hawkins says that the original
manuscripts of the "Rambler" passed through his hands, "and by the
perusal of them I am warranted to say, as was said of Shakespeare by the
players of his time, that he never blotted a line." Johnson tells us
that he wrote the life of Savage in six-and-thirty hours. He also wrote
his "Hermit of Teneriffe" in a single night. When we consider the amount
of literary work performed by Johnson, say in the period of seven years,
while "he sailed a long and painful voyage round the world of the
English language," and produced his dictionary, we must give him credit
for the most remarkable industry and great rapidity of production.
During these seven years he found time also to complete his "Rambler,"
the "Vanity of Human Wishes," and his tragedy, besides several minor
literary performances. No wonder he developed hypochondria. Burke was a
very slow and painstaking producer; it is even said that he had all his
works printed at a private press before submitting them to his
publisher.
Hume was more rapid, even careless with his first edition of a work, but
went on correcting each new one to the day of his death.[56] Macaulay,
in his elaborate speeches, did not write them out beforehand, but
_thought_ them out, trusting to his memory to recall every epigrammatic
statement and every felicitous epithet which he had previously forged in
his mind, so that when the time came for their delivery they appeared to
spring forth as the spontaneous outpouring of his feelings and
sentiments, excited by the questions discussed. Wendell Phillips
followed a similar method.
Thomas Paine, the political and deistical writer, was under contract to
furnish a certain amount of matter for each number of the "Pennsylvania
Magazine." Aitken the publisher had great difficulty in getting him to
fulfil his agreement. Paine's indolence was such that he was always
behindhand with his engagements. Finally, after it had become too late
to delay longer, Aitken would go to his house, tell him the printers
were standing idle waiting for his copy, and insist upon his
accompanying him to the office. Paine would do so, when pen, ink, and
paper would be placed before him, and he would sit thoughtfully, but
produce nothing until Aitken gave him a large glass of brandy. Even then
he would delay. The publisher naturally feared to give him a second
glass, thinking that it would disqualify him altogether, but, on the
contrary, his brain seemed to be illumined by it, and when he had
swallowed the third glass,--quite enough to have made Mr. Aitken dead
drunk,--he would write with rapidity, intelligence, and precision, his
ideas appearing to flow faster than he could express them on paper. The
copy produced under the fierce stimulant was remarkable for correctness,
and fit for the press without revision.[57]
Charlotte Bronté was a very slow producer of literary work, and was
obliged to choose her special days. Often for a week, and sometimes
longer, she could not write at all; her brain seemed to be dormant.
Then, without any premonition or apparent inducing cause, she would
awake in the morning, go to her writing-desk, and the ideas would come
with more rapidity than she could pen them. Mrs. Gaskell the novelist,
a friend of the Brontés, was exactly the opposite in her style of
composition. She could sit down at any hour and lose herself in the
process of the story she was composing. She was also a prolific
authoress, of whom George Sand said: "She has done what neither I nor
other female writers in France can accomplish; she has written novels
which excite the deepest interest in men of the world, and which every
girl will be the better for reading." Bacon[58] often had music played
in the room adjoining his library, saying that he gathered inspiration
from its strains. Warburton said music was always a necessity to him
when engaged in intellectual labor. Curran, the great Irish barrister,
had also his favorite mode of meditation; it was with his violin in
hand. He would seem to forget himself, running voluntaries over the
strings, while his imagination, collecting its tones, was kindling and
invigorating all his faculties for the coming contest at the bar. Bishop
Beveridge adopted Bacon's plan, and said, "When music sounds sweetest in
my ears, truth commonly flows the clearest in my mind." Even the cold,
passionless Carlyle said music was to him a kind of inarticulate speech
which led him to the edge of the infinite, and permitted him for a
moment to gaze into it.
John Foster, the English essayist, declared that the special quality of
genius was "the power to light its own fire;" and certainly Sir Walter
Scott was a shining example of this truth. Shelley, a poet of finer but
less robust fibre, decided that "the mind, in creating, is as a fading
coal, which some passing influence, like an invisible wind, wakens into
momentary brightness."
As already remarked, ten years transpired between the first sketch of
the "Traveller," which was made in Switzerland, and its publication; but
the history of the "Vicar of Wakefield" was quite different. Goldsmith
hastened the closing pages to raise money, being terribly pressed for
the payment of numerous small bills, and also by his landlady for rent.
He was actually under arrest for this last debt, and sent to Dr. Johnson
to come to him at once. Understanding very well what was the trouble,
Johnson sent him a guinea, and came in person as soon as he could. He
found, on arriving, that Goldsmith had already broken the guinea and was
drinking a bottle of wine purchased therewith. The Doctor put the cork
into the bottle, and began to talk over the means of extricating the
impecunious author from his troubles. Goldsmith told Johnson that he had
just finished a small book, and wished he would look at it; perhaps it
would bring in some money. He brought forth the manuscript of the
"Vicar of Wakefield." Johnson hastily glanced over it, paused, read a
chapter carefully, bade Goldsmith to be of good cheer, and hastened away
with the new story to Newbury the publisher, who, solely on Johnson's
recommendation, gave him sixty pounds for the manuscript and threw it
into his desk, where it remained undisturbed for two years.[59]
A voluminous writer once explained to Goldsmith the advantage of
employing an amanuensis. "How do you manage it?" asked Goldsmith. "Why,
I walk about the room and dictate to a clever man, who puts down very
correctly all that I tell him, so that I have nothing to do but to look
it over and send it to the printers." Goldsmith was delighted with the
idea, and asked his friend to send the scribe to him. The next day the
penman came with his implements, ready to catch his new employer's words
and to record them. Goldsmith paced the room with great thoughtfulness,
just as his friend had described to him, back and forth, back and forth,
several times; but after racking his brain to no purpose for half an
hour, he gave it up. He handed the scribe a guinea, saying, "It won't
do, my friend; I find that my head and hand must work together."
Milton dictated that immortal poem, "Paradise Lost," his daughters being
his amanuenses; but Milton was then blind. It is said of Julius Cæsar
that while writing a despatch he could at the same time dictate seven
letters to as many clerks. This seems almost miraculous; but in our own
day Paul Morphy has performed quite as difficult a feat at chess,
playing several games at once, blindfolded.
One of the most eminent and eloquent of American preachers and
lecturers, Thomas Starr King, was accustomed to dictate to an
amanuensis; but when a difficulty would occur in developing his thought,
he would take the pen in his own hand, and, abstracting himself entirely
from the wondering reporter by his side, would spend perhaps half an
hour in deeper thinking and more exact expression than when he dictated.
Those who have examined his manuscript since his death easily perceive
that the portions of a sermon or a lecture which he personally wrote are
better than those which he poured forth to his amanuensis as he walked
the room. On one occasion a friend who was in favor of making the pen
and brain work together went to hear Mr. King deliver a lecture on Pope
Gregory VII. (Hildebrand), and at its conclusion told the lecturer that
he could distinguish, without seeing the manuscript, the portions he
wrote with his own hand from those he dictated. He succeeded so well, in
the course of half an hour's conversation, as to surprise the orator by
hitting on the passages in dispute, and proving his case.
To write an acceptable book, poem, or essay, is quite as much of a trade
as to make a clock or shoe a horse. To produce easy-flowing sentences,
as they finally appear before the reader's eye, has cost much careful
thought, long and patient practice, and even with some famous authors,
as we have seen, many hours of writing and re-writing. So far as it is
applied to authorship, we are not surprised at Hogarth's remark: "I know
no such thing as genius; genius is nothing but labor and diligence."
Buffon's definition is nearly the same; he says, "Genius is only great
patience." Authors are generally very commonplace representatives of
humanity, and remarkably like the average citizen whom we meet in our
daily walk. Rogers, in his "Table Talk," says: "When literature is the
sole business of life, it becomes a drudgery; when we are able to resort
to it only at certain hours, it is a charming relaxation. In my early
years I was a banker's clerk, obliged to be at the desk every day from
ten to five o'clock, and I shall never forget the delight with which, on
returning home, I used to read and write during the evening." He was a
great reader, but said that "a man who attempts to read all the new
publications must often do as a flea does--skip."[60]
To recur to Charles Dickens, is it generally known that his favorite
novel of "David Copperfield" partially relates to the history of his own
boyhood? The story of David's employment, when a child, in washing and
labelling blacking-bottles in a London cellar, was true of Dickens
himself. If it were possible to read between the lines, we should not
infrequently find the most effective narrative sketches little less than
biography or autobiography. Thackeray and Dickens both wrote under the
thin gauze of fiction. "Vivian Gray" is but a photograph of its
dilettante author; and every character drawn by Charlotte Bronté is a
true portrait, all being confined within so small a circle as to be
easily recognizable. Smollett sat for his own personality in that of
Roderick Random; while Scott drew many of his most strongly
individualized characters, like that of Dominie Sampson, from people in
his immediate circle.
Coleridge says of Milton: "In 'Paradise Lost,' indeed in every one of
his poems, it is Milton himself whom you see. His Satan, his Adam, his
Raphael, almost his Eve, are all John Milton; and it is a sense of this
intense egotism that gives one the greatest pleasure in reading Milton's
works." It is well known that many of Byron's[61] poetical plots are
almost literally his personal experiences. This was especially the case
as to the "Giaour." A beautiful female slave was thrown into the sea for
infidelity, and was terribly avenged by her lover, while Byron was in
the East; being impressed with the dramatic character of the tragedy, he
gave it expression in a poem. Carlyle says that Satan was Byron's grand
exemplar, the hero of his poetry, and the model, apparently, of his
conduct. In Bulwer-Lytton's "Disowned," one of his earliest and best
stories, the hero, Clarence Linden, a youth of eighteen, while
journeying as a pedestrian, makes the acquaintance of a free-and-easy
person named Cole,--a gypsy king,--in whose camp he passes the night:
all of which was an actual experience of Bulwer himself. Hans Christian
Andersen gives us many of his personal experiences in his popular tale,
"Only a Fiddler;" so is "Gilbert Gurney," a novel by Theodore Hook, a
biography of himself as a practical joker. It will thus be seen that
authors do not always draw entirely upon the imagination for incidents,
characters, and plot, but that there is from first to last a large
amount of actual truth in seeming fiction.
When Goldsmith was a lad of fifteen or there-about, some one gave him a
guinea, with which, and a borrowed horse, he set out for a holiday trip.
He got belated when returning, and, inquiring of a stranger if he would
point out to him a house of entertainment, was mischievously directed to
the residence of the sheriff of the county. Here he knocked lustily at
the door, and sending his horse to the stable, ordered a good supper,
inviting the "landlord" to drink a bottle of wine with him. The next
morning, after an ample breakfast, he offered his guinea in payment,
when the squire, who knew Goldsmith's family, overwhelmed him with
confusion by telling him the truth. Thirty years afterwards Goldsmith
availed himself of this humiliating blunder at the time he wrote that
popular comedy, "She Stoops to Conquer." When Goldsmith was talking to a
friend of writing a fable in which little fishes were to be introduced,
Dr. Johnson, who was present, laughed rather sneeringly. "Why do you
laugh?" asked Goldsmith, angrily. "If you were to write a fable of
little fishes, you would make them speak like whales!" The justice of
the reproof was perfectly apparent to Johnson, who was conscious of
Goldsmith's superior inventiveness, lightness, and grace of composition.
Speaking of authors writing from their own personal experience recalls a
name which we must not neglect to mention. Laurence Sterne, author of
"Tristram Shandy," various volumes of sermons, the "Sentimental
Journey," etc., was a curious compound in character, but possessed of
real genius. He was quite a sentimentalist in his writings, and those
who did not know him personally would accredit him with possessing a
tender heart. The fact was, however, as Horace Walpole said of him, "He
had too much sentiment to have any feeling." His mother, who had run in
debt on account of an extravagant daughter, would have been permitted to
remain indefinitely in jail, but for the kindness of the parents of her
pupils. Her son Laurence heeded her not. "A dead ass was more important
to him than a living mother," says Walpole. Sterne also used his wife
very ill. One day he was talking to Garrick in a fine sentimental manner
in praise of conjugal love and fidelity. "The husband," said Sterne,
"who behaves unkindly to his wife, deserves to have his house burned
over his head." Garrick's reply was only just: "If you think so, I hope
_your_ house is insured." He is known to have been engaged to a Miss
Fourmantel for five years, and then to have jilted her so cruelly that
she ended her days in a mad-house. Such was the great Laurence Sterne.
It was poetical justice that he should repent at leisure of his
subsequent hasty marriage to one whom he had known only four weeks. He
twice visited the lady whom he had deceived, in the establishment where
she was confined; and the character of Maria, whom he so pathetically
describes, is drawn from her, showing how cheaply he could coin his
pretended feelings. Contradictions in character are often ludicrous,
and go to show that the author and the man are seldom one. What can be
more contradictory in the nature of the same individual than Sterne
whining over a dead ass and neglecting to relieve a living mother; or
Prior addressing the most romantic sonnets to his Chloe, and at the same
time indulging a sentimental passion for a barmaid?
Goldsmith's "Deserted Village," according to Mr. Best, an Irish
clergyman, relates to the scenes in which Goldsmith was himself an
actor. Auburn is a poetical name for the village of Lissoy, county of
Westneath. The name of the schoolmaster was Paddy Burns. "I remember him
well," says Mr. Best; "he was indeed a man severe to view. A woman
called Walsey Cruse kept the ale-house. I have often been within it. The
hawthorn bush was remarkably large, and stood in front of the
ale-house." The author of the "Deserted Village," however, made his best
contemporary "hit" with his poem of the "Traveller." He always
distrusted his poetic ability, and this poem was kept on hand some years
after it was completed, before he published it in 1764. It passed
through several editions in the first year, and proved a golden harvest
to Newbury the publisher; but Goldsmith received only twenty guineas for
the manuscript.
The character of Sober, in Johnson's "Idler," is a portrait of himself;
and he admitted more than once that he had his own outset in life in his
mind when he wrote the Eastern story of "Gelaleddin." Is not "Tristram
Shandy" a synonym for its author, Sterne? Hazlitt and many others fuse
the personality of the author of the "Imaginary Conversations" with this
admirable work from his pen: certainly a high compliment to Landor, if
the portraiture is a likeness. Walter Savage Landor[62] was a most
erratic genius, a man of uncontrollable passions which led him into
constant difficulties; at times he must have been partially deranged. In
all his productions he exhibits high literary culture; and being born to
a fortune, he was enabled to adapt himself to his most fastidious
tastes, though in the closing years of his life, having lost his money,
he learned the meaning of that bitter word dependence. The severest
critic must accord him the genius of a poet; but his literar reputation
will rest upon his elaborate prose work, "Imaginary Conversations" of
literary men and statesmen, upon which he was engaged for more than ten
years. He lived to the age of ninety, and found solace in his pen to the
last.