for grown and able Writers to stand of themselves and worke with their owne strength, to trust and endeavour by their owne faculties; so it is fit for the beginner and learner to study others, and the best. For the mind and memory are more sharpely exercis'd in comprehending an other mans things then our owne; and such as accustome themselves, and are familiar with the best Authors, shall ever and anon find somewhat of them in themselves, and, in the expression of their minds, even when they feele it not, be able to utter something like theirs which hath an Authority above their owne.1 V. SAMUEL JOHNSON Upon his mentioning that when he came to College he wrote his first exercise twice over, but never did so afterwards MISS ADAMS. I suppose, Sir, you could not make them better?' JOHNSON. 'Yes, Madam, to be sure, I could make them better. Thought is better than no thought.' Miss ADAMS. 'Do you think, Sir, you could make your Ramblers better?' JOHNSON. Certainly I could.' BOSWELL. 'I'll lay a bet, Sir, you cannot.' JOHNSON. But I will, Sir, if I choose. I shall make the best of them you shall pick out, better.' BOSWELL. 'But you may add to them. I will not allow of that.' JOHNSON. Nay, Sir, there are three ways of making them better putting out, adding, or correcting.'" ་ ་ 1 Ben Jonson, Discoveries (ed. Castelain), pp. 84-86. VI. ROUSSEAU Two things, very opposite, unite in me, and in a manner which I cannot myself conceive. My disposition is extremely ardent, my passions lively and impetuous, yet my ideas are produced slowly, with great embarrassment and after much afterthought. It might be said my heart and understanding do not belong to the same individual. 'A sentiment takes possession of my soul with the rapidity of lightning, but instead of illuminating, it dazzles and confounds me; I feel all, but see nothing; I am warm, but stupid; to think, I must be cool. What is astonishing, my conception is clear and penetrating, if not hurried. I can make excellent impromptus at leisure, but on the instant could never say or do anything worth notice. . . . This slowness of thought, joined to vivacity of feeling, I am not only sensible of in conversation, but even alone. When I write, my ideas are arranged with the utmost difficulty. . . . Thence arises the extreme difficulty I find in writing; my manuscripts, blotted, scratched, 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. Never could I do anything when placed at a table, pen in hand; it must be walking among the rocks, or in the woods. It is at night in my bed, during my wakeful hours, that I compose; it may be judged how slowly, particularly for a man who has not the advantage of verbal memory, and never in his life could retain by heart six verses. Some of my periods I have turned and re-turned in my head five or six nights before they were fit to be put to paper; thus it is that I succeed better in works that require laborious attention than those that appear more trivial, such as letters, in which I could never succeed, and being obliged to write one is to me a serious punishment; nor can I express my thoughts on the most trivial subjects without it costing me hours of fatigue. If I write immediately what strikes me, my letter is a long, confused, unconnected string of expressions, which, when read, can hardly be understood.1 VII. GILMAN ON COLERIDGE It has been repeated, ad nauseam, that great minds will not descend to the industrious accumulation of those acquirements best suited to fit them for independence. To say that Coleridge would not condescend would be a calumny; nay, when his health permitted, he would drudge and work more laboriously at some of the mechanical parts of literature than any man I ever knew.2 VIII. COLERIDGE [Coleridge writes] . The delay in copy has been owing to me as the writer of Christabel. Every line has been produced by me with labor pangs.3 1 Rousseau, Confessions, Book 3, pp. 86, 87, in the translation published by Glaisher. 2 Gilman, Life of Coleridge, p. 63. 8 Christabel (ed. E. H. Coleridge), pp. 39-40. On Saturday, 30th, Wm. worked at The Pedlar all the morning. He kept the dinner waiting till four o'clock. He was much tired. . . . Sunday, 31st. Wm. had slept very ill. He was tired. . . . Monday, February 1st. Wm. slept badly. I baked bread. William worked hard at The Pedlar, and tired himself. . . . Tuesday, 2d February. . . . William worked at The Pedlar. ... Friday, 5th.... Wm. cut wood a little. Sate up late at The Pedlar. . . . Monday Morning, 8th February.. William worked at his poem... Tuesday. Wm. had slept better. He fell to work, and made himself unwell. . . . We went to bed, but not till Wm. had tired himself.. ... Wednesday, 10th.... I was writing out the poem-as we hoped, for a final writing. . . . We read the first part, and were delighted with it, but Wm. afterwards got to some ugly place, and went to bed tired out. . . . Thursday, 11th. . . . Wm. sadly tired and working at The Pedlar. . . . Friday, 12th. A very fine, bright, clear, hard frost. Wm. working again. I recopied The Pedlar, but poor Wm. all the time at work. . . . Saturday, 13th. . . . Still at work at The Pedlar, alter ing and refitting.. ... Tuesday, 16th. . . . He was better-had altered The Pedlar.... Wednesday [March 3]. I was so unlucky as to propose to rewrite The Pedlar. Wm. got to work, and was worn to death. . . . ... Friday Morning. . I wrote The Pedlar, and finished it before I went to Mrs. Simpson's to drink tea... Sunday Morning. . . . I stitched up The Pedlar; wrote out Ruth; read it with the alterations Tuesday Morning. We sate by the fire in the evening, and read The Pedlar over. William worked a little, and altered it in a few places.1 X. DE QUINCEY What may certainly be said of these, or of any dreams or series of dreams which De Quincey ever had ready to insert in the Confessions, is that, on his own word, they were not written in a mere glow of spirits. He reminds the reader of the perilous difficulty besieging all attempts to clothe in words the visionary scenes derived from the world of dreams, where a single false note, a single word in a wrong key, ruins the whole music.' We have already referred to the passages in which he implies, or directly affirms, that some smaller part of the Confessions had not been written hastily had received at least an ordinary verbal correction.' De Quincey sympathizes with the toils of others in composition with the excessive labor of Junius, for example; and we know by all accounts how careful a workman he himself was, how 1 Journals of Dorothy Wordsworth (ed. Knight) 1. 82 ff. |