was forgotten in a few months, though his verses were edited by the Laureate, and praised in the Quarterly Review. A certain literary Cardinal used to boast, that he had written all his works with the same pen. If he had been unable to procure another, the world might have commended his careful preservation of this single instrument of author-craft, and have pitied the unhappy printers who had to compose from an unintelligible manuscript; but as this mechanical difficulty was of his own choosing, we only smile at such an indication of littleness and obliquity of mind. His ingenious saving of quills conferred no interest on his works. He, however, who voluntarily writes against time, and fancies that there is a prodigious merit in declining to avail himself of a few additional hours for consideration and correction, is not a whit less absurd and puerile than was the writer who thus voluntarily confined himself for years to the use of a single quill. Such an uncalled-for economy of pens and time is neither useful nor commendable, but shows " a most pitiful ambition in the fool that uses it." Anna Seward had the impudence to talk of translating an Ode of Horace while dressing her hair. If her translations had been worth a straw, we should have been surprised at her facility; but their real value would have received no additional charm from the mode in which they were produced. On the contrary, we should have had reason to be dissatisfied with them, however good, when we came to consider how much better they might have been made, if the author had been less presumptuous and more careful. Her affectation of facility was disrespectful both to fellow men, that deceives or puzzles the judgment of their associates. Rousseau, in his Emilius, observes that nothing is more difficult than to distinguish real dulness in children, from that apparent and fallacious stupidity, the forerunner of great abilities. He reminds us that the younger Cato in his infancy, passed for an idiot. He speaks also of a profound reasoner of his own acquaintance, who at a pretty advanced age appeared to his family and friends to possess a very ordinary capacity. Sheridan, Walter Scott, Byron, and many other men of equal eminence, were by no means brilliant in the school-room. Horace and to the public, and her indecent haste or negligence was in direct defiance of the advice of Horace himself. The author of an impromptu may boast with some reason of his quickness, but other writers are not timed like race horses. If these vain and careless authors wrote with greater elegance and effect than modest and careful ones, we might restrain our indignation at their fopperies; but it is almost idle to observe that true genius is very rarely the accompaniment of self-conceit, and that in all human arts the attainment of excellence is the result of a happy combination of skill and labour. Extreme facility is, generally speaking, an unfavorable indication of the character of an author's mind. Rapid writers, like rapid talkers, are far more frequently shallow than profound. The tongue, says Butler, is like a racehorse, which runs the faster the lesser weight it carries. It is the same with the pen. The veins of golden thought do not lie upon the surface of the mind. The wealthiest men may want ready cash. Some people fall into the egregious mistake of supposing that easy writing must be easy reading. It is quite the contrary. As Pope says, "True ease in writing comes from art, not chance; As those move easiest who have learned to dance*." "The best performances," says Melmoth," have generally cost the most labour; and that ease which is essential to fine writing, has seldom been attained without repeated and severe corrections. With as much facility as the numbers of Prior seem * "When I was looking on Pope's foul copy of the Iliad, and observing how very much it was corrected and interlined, he said, 'I believe you would find, upon examination, that those parts which have been the most corrected read the easiest."-Spence's Anecdotes. A Mr. Tupper has published a Continuation of Christabel, and has told his readers that it was "the pleasant labour of but a very few days." Coleridge wrote the first part in 1797, and the second in 1800, and did not publish them till 1816. See a review of this Continuation in Blackwood's Magazine for Dec. 1838. to have flowed from him, they were the result of much application. A friend of mine, who undertook to transcribe one of the noblest performances of the finest genius that this, or perhaps any age can boast, has often assured me that there is not a single line, as it is published, which stands in conformity with the original manuscript." Rousseau has remarked, that with whatever faculties a man may be born, the art of writing is of difficult acquisition. Hazlitt was so many years before he could give expression to his thoughts, that he almost despaired of ever succeeding as an author. It is true that he attained great facility before he died. It is thus also with the painter. The quick master-touch is only to be acquired at the expense of long toil and study. A manual dexterity, however, is almost sure to be attained at last, after a certain degree of practice; but a corresponding ease and celerity of execution is not always to be acquired by an author, even in a long life of literary labour. Some of the most eloquent writers that ever lived, have produced their earliest and latest works with the same difficulty and toil. "For e'en by genius excellence is bought With length of labour, and a life of thought." It has been very justly observed, that nothing is such an obstacle to the production of excellence as the power of producing what is pretty good with ease and rapidity. 66 Rousseau has described the ceaseless inquietude," with which he attained the magic and beauty of his style. "His existing manuscripts," says D'Israeli, " display more erasures than Pope's, and show his eagerness to set down his first thoughts, and his art to raise them to the impassioned style of his imagination*." Dr. Johnson has told us of the " 'blotted * My manuscripts blotted, scratched, interlined, and scarcely legible, attest the trouble they cost me; nor is there one of them but I have been obliged to transcribe four or five times, before it went to press.-Rousseau's Confessions. manuscripts of Milton," and has shown the painful care and fastidiousness of Pope (to which D'Israeli alludes) by the publication of some of the corrected proofs of the translation of Homer. Swift highly appreciated Pope's art of condensation. " "In Pope I cannot read a line But, with a sigh, I wish it mine; More sense than I could do in six." Ugo Foscolo, in his elegant Essay on Petrarch, informs us, that if the manuscripts did not still exist, it would be impossible to imagine or believe the unwearied pains this poet has bestowed on the correction of his verses." "They are curious monuments," he adds, "although they afford little aid in exploring by what secret workings the long and laborious meditation of Petrarch has spread over his poetry all the natural charms of sudden and irresistible inspiration." It is said of the celebrated Bembo, that he had a desk with forty divisions, through which each of his sonnets was passed in due succession, at fixed intervals of time, and that at every change of place it received a fresh revisal*. Joseph Warton, in his Essay on Pope, quotes the assertion of Fenton, that Waller passed the greatest part of a summer in composing a poem of ten stanzas. "So that," adds Fenton, "however he is generally reputed the parent of those swarms of insect wits, who affect to be thought easy writers, it is evident that he bestowed much time and care on his poems before he ventured them out of his hands." Warton also mentions, in further illustration of his subject, that it is well known that the writings of Voiture, of Sarassin, and La Fontaine, cost them much pains, * Voltaire, in his Temple of Taste, represents that in the innermost part of the sanctuary he saw a small number of truly great men employed in correcting those faulty passages of their works, which would have passed for beauties in the productions of writers of inferior genius. and were laboured into that facility for which they are so famous, with repeated alterations and many erasures. Moliere, is reported to have passed whole days in fixing upon a proper epithet or rhyme, although his verses have the flow and freedom of conversation. Some of Rochefoucault's maxims received twenty or thirty revisions, and the author eagerly sought the advice of his friends. Buffon called genius patience. It is said that Shakespeare never blotted a line. To this we may reply with Ben Jonson, would that he had blotted a thousand!* The errors and imperfections that are discoverable even in his wondrous pages, are spots on the sun that we often have occasion to wish away. Foreigners constantly throw these defects in the teeth of his national admirers. But Pope, in his Preface to Shakespeare, has shown that the great bard did not always disdain the task of correction, though he sometimes neglected it. The Merry Wives of Windsor and the tragedy of Hamlet were almost entirely re-written. "E'en copious Dryden wanted, or forgot, The last and greatest art—the art to blot." Dryden sometimes, however, corrected his pieces very carefully, when he was not writing hurriedly for bread. He spent a fortnight in composing and correcting the Ode on St. Cecilia's Day. But what is this, exclaims Dr. Johnson, to the patience and diligence of Boileau, whose Equivoque, a poem of only three hun * A portion of the passage in which these expressions occur, may be pertinently repeated in this place." I remember," says Ben Jonson, "the players have often mentioned it as an honour to Shakspeare, that in his writing (whatsoever he penned) he never blotted out a line. My answer hath been, "Would that he had blotted a thousand," which they thought a malevolent speech. I had not told posterity this, but for their ignorance, who chose that circumstance to commend their friend, wherein he most faulted; and to justify mine own candour; for I loved the man, and do honour his memory, on this side idolatry, as much as any." |