the prose writers and the poets of various centuries, and practised in all kinds of stylistic tones, in order to learn 'to preserve a fitting key of words,' such as the easy tone in An Apology for Idlers, or as the serious one in Old Mortality. Not until he had passed through this severe course of training did he attain success, with 'legions of words swarming to his call, dozens of turns of phrase simultaneously bidding for his choice.'

This great industry, this conscientious application, which were so characteristic of Stevenson in his youth, remained with him throughout his whole life. Only seldom could he say, as he did in reference to Treasure Island, that words flowed from his pen in the effortless manner in which easy conversation comes from the lips. He polished his prose as Tennyson did his poetry, and only let work of the best quality go from his hands. In the Vailima Letters he writes as follows: In the South Sea book I have fifty pages copied fair, some of which has been four times, and all twice written; certainly fifty pages of solid scriving inside a fortnight.' Further on he says: 'As for my damned literature, God knows what a business it is, grinding along without a scrap of inspiration or a note of style. The last two chapters [The South Sea Letters] have taken me considerably over a month, and they are still beneath pity.' Still further: 'But it [The Ebb Tide] goes slowly, as you may judge from the fact that this three weeks past I have only struggled from page 58 to page 82; twenty-four pages, et encore sure to be rewritten, in twenty-one days. This is no prize-taker; not much Waverley Novels about this!' And to conclude: 'I was a living half-hour

upon a single clause, and have a gallery of variants that would surprise you.'

One might, accordingly, object to Stevenson that his style is not natural, and therefore not good; but this charge he angrily refutes in his essay on style, in these words: 'That style is therefore the most perfect, not, as fools say, which is the most natural, for the most natural is the disjointed babble of the chronicler; but which attains the highest degree of elegant and pregnant implication unobtrusively; or if obtrusively, then with the greatest gain to sense and vigor.' And again in Memories and Portraits, where he meets the charge of a want of originality, consequent upon the confession of his imitative attempts: Perhaps I hear some one cry out: "But this is not the way to be original!" It is not; nor is there any way but to be born so. Nor yet, if you are born original, is there anything in this training that shall clip the wings of your originality.' 1

XVI. LAFCADIO HEARN

Yet the clothing in words was no small task, as witness the accompanying examples [facsimile specimens of original manuscript] of how he labored for the perfection of his vehicle. These are not the first struggles of a young and clumsy artist, but the efforts at the age of fifty-three of one of the greatest masters of English.

It was done, too, by a man who earned with his pen in a year less than the week's income of one of the facile authors of the six best sellers.'

1 W. P. Chalmers, Charakteristische Eigenschaften von R.L. Stevenson's Stil, pp. 1-4. Marburg, 1903.

As has been said of De Quincey, whom Hearn in many ways resembled: 'I can grasp a little of his morbid suffering in the eternal struggle for perfection of utterance; I can share a part of his aesthetic torment over cacophony, redundance, obscurity, and all the thousand minute delicacies and subtleties of resonance and dissonance, accent and caesura, that only a De Quincey's ear appreciates and seeks to achieve or evade. How many care for these fine things to-day? How many are concerned if De Quincey uses a word with a long "a" sound, or spends a sleepless night in his endeavor to find another with the short "a," that shall at once answer his purpose, and crown his sentence with harmony? Who lovingly examine the great artist's methods now, dip into the secret of his mystery, and weigh verb against adjective, vowel against consonant, that they may a little understand the unique splendor of this prose? And who, when an artist is the matter, attempt to measure his hopes as well as his attainments, or praise a noble ambition perhaps shining through faulty attempt? How many, even among those who write, have fathomed the toil and suffering, the continence and self-denial of our great artists in words?'1

1 Elizabeth Bisland, Life and Letters of Lafcadio Hearn 1. 132-135.

XVII. JOWETT

His theory of preaching was not to read largely, or to go through a long elaboration of thought for the special occasion, but to take some subject which he had already worked out both in thought and in experience, and to write it as the direct product of his mind and heart. But he was extremely careful, even fastidious, in the expression of his thoughts; and in this, as in every part of his work, he gave himself incredible pains, as is evidenced by the alterations, erasures, and additions in the manuscript. Even the revising of an old sermon cost him much. His sense of the importance of care and trouble in such matters made him unwilling to publish; and when, in the last two years of his life, in response to the request of his old pupils in 1892, he set to work to go over his sermons for publication, he was often driven to rewrite with great difficulty. In one case he makes the following note: This is the eighth time I have tried to rewrite this sermon and have failed.'1

XVIII. BALZAC

We have said that Balzac wrought laboriously, and, an obstinate caster, ten or a dozen times expelled from his crucible the metal which had not exactly filled the mold. Like Bernard Palissy, he would have burned his furniture, his floor, and even the beams of his house, to keep up the fire of his furnace, so as not to fail in his experiment; the most rigid necessities never made him deliver

1 Jowett, College Sermons, Preface, pp. vii-viii.

a work to his publisher upon which he had not expended his utmost effort, and he gave admirable examples of literary conscientiousness. His corrections, so numerous that they were almost equivalent to different editions of the same idea, were charged to his account by the publishers, and his compensation, often moderate for the value of the work and the trouble it had cost him, was diminished in proportion. The promised sums did not always arrive when due, and to sustain what he laughingly called his floating debt, Balzac displayed prodigious resources of mind, and an activity which would have completely absorbed the life of an ordinary man.

But when, seated before his table in his friar's frock, in the midst of the nocturnal silence, he found himself face to face with blank sheets, upon which was projected the light of his luminary of seven candles concentrated by a shade, taking pen in hand, he forgot all. And then commenced a conflict more terrible than the conflict of Jacob with the angel that between the form and the idea. From those battles of each night, at morn he issued broken but victorious; the fire having gone out, and the atmosphere of his room being chilled, his head smoked, and his body exhaled a mist visible as that from the bodies of horses in the winter season. Sometimes a single phrase would occupy him for an entire sitting; it was appraised and re-appraised, twisted, kneaded, hammered, lengthened, abbreviated-written in a hundred different fashions; and, strangest thing of all! the necessary, absolute form presented itself only after the exhaustion of all the approximate forms. Doubtless the metal often cooled in a fuller and thicker cast, but