richly, when it came involuntarily, or even against my will. I was so accustomed to say over a song to myself, without being able to collect it again, that I sometimes rushed to the desk, and, without taking time to adjust a sheet that was lying crosswise, wrote the poem diagonally from beginning to end, without stirring from the spot. For the same reason I preferred to use a pencil, which gives the characters more willingly for it had sometimes happened that the scratching and spattering of the pen would wake me from my somnambulistic poetizing, distract my attention, and stifle some small product in the birth. For such poetry I had a special reverence. To barter it for money seemed to me detestable." Goethe, with all his love of art and passion for beauty, wrote in an undecorated room, on a plain table, with few books, and no pictures or scenery in view.

Some distinguished authors have never written so well as when they were full dressed for company. But profound thought and poetical inspiration have most generally visited men, when, from their circumstances or habits, the rent garment and shabby appearance have made them quite unfit for fashionable society.

Bloomfield, the poet, relates of himself that nearly one-half of his poem, "The Farmer's Boy," was composed, without writing a word of it, while he was at work, with other shoemakers, in a garret.

were both

The "Prometheus" and the "Cenci " written in Italy. "The Prometheus," says Shelley, 66 was written upon the mountainous ruins of the Baths of Caracalla, among the flowery glades and thickets of

odoriferous blossoming trees, which are extended in ever-winding labyrinths upon its immense platforms, and dizzy arches suspended in the air. The bright blue sky of Rome, and the effect of the vigorous awakening of spring in that divinest climate, and the new life with which it drenches the spirits even to intoxication, were the inspiration of this drama." Shelley, while an Oxford student, read at all times-at table, in bed, and while walking. He read not only in the streets of Oxford, but in the most crowded thoroughfares of London. Out of the twenty-four hours he frequently read sixteen.

Among our notices of literary life, we may refer to the interesting glimpses of author-craft furnished us in the instance of Southey, from his own pen: "My actions," ," he writes, "are as regular as St. Dunstan's quarter-boys. Three pages of history after breakfast (equivalent to five in small quarto printing); then to transcribe and copy for the press, or to make my selections or biographies, or what else suits my humor, till dinner-time; from dinner till tea I read, write letters, see the newspapers, and very often indulge in a siesta. After tea I go to poetry, and correct, re-write and copy till I am tired, and then turn to anything else till supper." An English reviewer observes that the result of his intense and regular application is marvellous. We question whether any writer of any country ever produced so much. The fountain never ceased to flow until, fairly exhausted, it could yield no more. The man had but one brain and but one pair of hands, yet he performed at one time the labor of an academy.

In a letter to a friend, in 1806, he writes: "Last night I began the preface to the Specimens of English Poets.' Huzza! And now, Grosvenor, let me tell you what I have to do. I am writing-1. 'The History of Portugal.' 2. The Chronicle of the Cid.' 3. The Curse of Kehama.' 4. 'Espriella's Letters.' Look you, all these I am writing. The second and third must get into the press and out of it before this time twelvemonth, or else I shall be like the civil list. By way of interlude comes in the preface. Don't swear, and bid me do one thing at a time, no, nor two either; and it is only by doing many things that I contrive to do so much; for I cannot work long at anything without hurting myself, and I do everything by heats; then by the time I am tired of one, my inclination for another is at hand." One stands appalled in the presence of Southey's poetic feats. "Is it not a pity," he writes to one of his poetic friends, "that I should not execute my intention of writing more verses than Lopez de Vega, more tragedies than Dryden, and more epics than Blackmore? The more I write, the more I have to write. I have a Helicon kind of dropsy upon me, and crescit indulgens sibi.”

In another letter, written before he was twenty, he remarks that he has accomplished a most arduous task: "I have transcribed all my verses that appear worth the trouble. Of these I took one list-another of my pile of stuff and nonsense-and a third of what I have burnt and lost; upon an average ten thousand verses are burnt and lost, the same number preserved, and fifteen thousand worthless. Consider that all my

letters are excluded, and you may judge what waste of paper I have occasioned." Writing a thousand lines, or destroying a thousand, the labor was equally effortless. "Yesterday," he tells another, "I drew my pen across six hundred lines, and am now writing to you instead of supplying their place."

Pope never could compose well without first declaiming for some time at the top of his voice, and thus rousing his nervous system to its fullest activity.

"The things," says Pope, "that I have written fastest, have always pleased the most. I wrote the 'Essay on Criticism' fast, for I had digested all the mat ter in prose before I began upon it in verse. The 'Rape of the Lock' was written rapidly, all the machinery was added afterwards; and the making that, and what was published before, hit so well together, is, I think, one of the greatest proofs of judgment of anything I ever did. I wrote most of the 'Iliad' fast, a great deal of it on journeys, from a little pocket Homer, and often forty or fifty verses on a morning in bed."

Colton wrote his aphorisms, "Lacon," upon covers of letters and any scraps of paper that came to hand. Sad that so gifted a philosopher should indite such excellent thoughts for others, and he himself prove so erratic. Although a beneficed clergyman, he became a notorious gambler, and ultimately committed suicide, at Paris, in 1832.

Other writers have been remarkable for their economy of paper. Haydn wrote his valuable work, "Dictionary of Dates," on any scraps of newspaper

corners, or fragments of old letters that came in his way. He picked up many of his facts while consorting with his boosy beer-drinking companions in porterhouses. Sharon Turner, who had not, like Haydn, the excuse of poverty, since he was in receipt of a literary pension of £300 per annum, yet used odd scraps of letters and torn paper in writing his "Sacred History of the World "—to the terrible discomfiture of his printer. Some slow writers have left us tedious books, and others who have composed with surprising facility, have produced some of the most stirring and beautiful works of genius. Some, like Cæsar, have experienced the highest mental excitement amidst the busiest activities of life, and others again, have found the moods and tenses of authorship most propitious-like our great pastoral poets, when worshipping at the shrine of Nature. Crabbe, Southey, Burns, and Wordsworth are instances of the latter; the last named of whom, being asked for his library, led his friend to the adjacent fields.

Washington Jrbing usually devoted his entire days to his literary toils, with but slight intermissions. In his picturesque old Dutch mansion, Sunnyside, his study-festooned with the luxuriant ivy, originally from a slip from Melrose, given to him by Scott, and looking over a beautiful lawn, the silver Hudson gleaming in the distance-is the presence-chamber of the gifted author of the "Sketch-Book"-a work that "needs only age to render it classic."

He was never more astonished, he said, than at the success of the "Sketch-Book." His writing of those