rarely content with his creations. The greater part of the Confessions, because of pecuniary stress, was hastily put together. Later in life, when the author came to revise, he bestowed measureless pains on this work, toiling on in spite of 'a nervous malady of very peculiar character.' 'Although pretty nearly dedicating myself to this one solitary labor, and not intermitting or relaxing it for a single day, I have yet spent,' he says in 1856, 'within a very few days, six calendar months upon the recast of this one small volume.' In this revision he changed the general narrative to a large extent, he added lyrical matter as well, and he slightly modified the lyrical matter already existing.1

XI. CARDINAL NEWMAN

It is simply the fact that I have been obliged to take great pains with everything I have written, and I often write chapters over and over again, besides innumerable corrections and interlinear additions. ... I have heard that Archbishop Howley, who was an elegant writer, betrayed the labor by which he became so by his mode of speaking, which was most painful to hear from his hesitations and alterations—that is, he was correcting his composition as he went along.

However, I may truly say that I never have been in the practice since I was a boy of attempting to write well, or to form an elegant style. I think I have never written for writing' sake; but my one and single desire and aim has been to do what is so difficult-viz. to express clearly

1 Lane Cooper, The Prose Poetry of Thomas De Quincey, p. 32.

and exactly my meaning; this has been the motive principle of all my corrections and rewritings. When I have read over a passage which I had written a few days before, I have found it so obscure to myself that I have either put it altogether aside or fiercely corrected it; but I don't get any better for practice. I am as much obliged to correct and rewrite as I was thirty years ago.1

XII. CHARLES LAMB

You... cannot conceive of the desultory and uncertain way in which I (an author by fits) sometimes cannot put the thoughts of a common letter into sane prose. Any work which I take upon myself as an engagement will act upon me to torment; e.g., when I have undertaken, as three or four times I have, a schoolboy copy of verses for Merchant Taylors' boys, at a guinea a copy, I have fretted over them, in perfect inability to do them, and have made my sister wretched with my wretchedness for a week together.2

XIII. MANZONI

The publication, a few months ago, by Francesco Sforza, of Brani inediti dei Promessi Sposi (Unpublished Passages from I Promessi Sposi) has led to a second and enlarged edition (964 pages divided into two volumes, whereas the original edition was a single volume of 692 pages). The reading public, it is evident, has not agreed with those

1 Letters and Correspondence of John Henry Newman (ed. Mozley) 2. 476, 477.

2 Lucas, Life of Charles Lamb 1. 335, 336.

critics who indignantly regarded Sforza's book as a profanation of Manzoni's memory in bringing to light what had been, after mature judgment, deliberately omitted, but has found a special literary value in the steps through which the masterpiece developed. The Brani bear witness to an incessant correcting, retouching, and polishing, and prove to what a degree Manzoni carried his revision, writing and rewriting a line a score of times, and then perhaps, after all, not printing a word of it. He was moved, apparently, sometimes by religious scruples, sometimes by aesthetic considerations, or by motives of historical accuracy.1

XIV. TENNYSON

And then he [Tennyson] questioned W[allace] again about tropical scenery, producing a poem in мs., from which he read two or three lines about palms and purple seas. He wanted to know if the palm-trees could be seen rising distinct above the rest of the forest.

W. 'Yes, on a hill-side.'

་

'What color are they?'

Rather light-gray-green.

'Is an expanse of tropical forest dark, seen from above?'

'Not particularly; less so than an English woodland.' T.Then I must change the word "dark."'

He writes his poetry now in trim small quarto books, in limp covers, the writing as neat as ever, though sometimes a little shaky. He keeps these books handy and takes them up very often, both at set times and odd

1 The Nation, November 9, 1905, p. 384.

moments, considering and correcting, and frequently reading new poems aloud from them, first to his family and afterwards to visitors. After the compositions are put into type he usually keeps them by him in proof for a long time, months or even years, reconsidering and perfecting every part.1

XV. STEVENSON

In his essays he [Stevenson] has told us how he learned to write; and in an essay which appeared in the Contemporary Review of April, 1885, he discloses to us the secret of his art. In Memories and Portraits he writes : 'All through my boyhood and youth I was known and pointed out for the pattern of an idler; and yet I was always busy on my own private end, which was to learn to write. I kept always two books in my pocket, one to read, one to write in. As I walked, my mind was busy fitting what I saw with appropriate words; when I sat by the roadside, I would either read, or a pencil and a penny version-book would be in my hand, to note down the features of the scene, or commemorate some halting stanzas. Thus I lived with words. And what I thus wrote was for no ulterior use; it was written consciously for practice. It was not so much that I wished to be an author (though I wished that too), as that I vowed I would learn to write. That was a proficiency that tempted me; and I practised to acquire it, as men learn to whittle, in a wager with myself.' All this occurred out of doors. At home he continued his attempts with somewhat better results: 'Whenever I read a book or a passage that pleased me,

1 William Allingham, A Diary, p. 334.

in which a thing was said or an effect rendered with propriety, in which there was either some conspicuous force or some happy distinction in the style, I must sit down at once and set myself to ape that quality. I was unsuccessful, and I knew it, and tried again, and was again unsuccessful, and always unsuccessful; but at least, in these vain bouts, I got some practice in rhythm, in harmony, in construction and the co-ordination of parts. I have thus played the sedulous ape to Hazlitt, to Lamb, to Wordsworth, to Sir Thomas Browne, to Defoe, to Hawthorne, to Montaigne, to Baudelaire, and to Obermann.'

From this confession we see that Stevenson worked consciously and industriously to learn to write, and that he attained his goal through imitation of the masters of style, through 'ventriloquial efforts.' In his sixth year he dictated a Life of Moses, in his ninth he described his journey in Perth, in his thirteenth he undertook to do justice to the inhabitants of Peebles after the fashion of the Book of Snobs. When he was sixteen years old (1866) his first printed work appeared, a pamphlet about the insurrection in the Pentlands; in his twentieth and twenty-first years he wrote several essays, which later appeared together in the Edinburgh Edition; about the same time he also brought out a few articles in the Edinburgh University Magazine. In his twenty-third year he openly appeared in the Portfolio with an essay on Roads, in which he gave proof that he was already master of his art. From this time on, he constantly had articles in various periodicals; and in May, 1878, his first book, An Inland Voyage, came out. Such diligent creation evinces a very careful and profitable period of study, during which he imitated