METHODS OF MEN OF GENIUS.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 6936, 27 October 1900, Page 3

METHODS OF MEN OF GENIUS.

(London Sun.) • Almost overy author has his idiosyncrasy, and can <do his work satisfactorily only at j special hours, amid particular surroundings, and in a particular way. A few authors, like Arnold, of Rugby, Priestley, and Beddoes, write best in the family room ; others ' ■ are powerless outside of their own den. One ' author, like Goldsmith, can write well only : when en deshabille ; another, only dn full dress. It was, no doubt, a natural instinct which prompted the old musical composers to don j their Court dresses, with bagwigs and ruf- • fles, when tihey were about to begin their work. HAYDtf arrayed himself for his divine task in full Court costume, his peruke sprinkled with powder, his wrists encircled with delicate ruffles of fine lace, and his fingers covered with rings of precious stones. Richaid- ! so©, the novelist, required a laced suit, , and a diamond on his finger, before he j could portray the sufferings of a Pamela ' or a Clarissa Harlowe, or depict the courtly, ultra-perfect Sir Charles Grandison with his j eternal bowing and solemn •hanidshakang. ! Rousseau was wont to sit at 'his desk 'in full % dress, like Handel at the organ, and he wrote the amatory billets that passed between Julie and Saint-Preux m ! what Burke called " that famous work of ■ philosophic gallantry," "La Nouvelle Heloise," on scented note-paper, with the finest of crow-quills. With a similar reganrd for the fitness of his literary tools, Thomas Moore, the pet of punsters, peeresses, and the public, wore always . i A PAIR OF KID GLOVES ■when he was writing, the ends of which he was wont to nibble when in the throes of literary composition, till the tips of all the fingers were quite bitten through. His brilliant Oriental romance, . "Lalla Rookh," was written in a cottage blocked tip by snow, wifch>n English- winter howling around. • • ■ Goethe, notwithstanding his love of art and passion for beauty, wrote in a room, devoid of decoration, on a plain table, with few books and no pictures or scenery in view. . Lamartine, on the contrary, composed in a studio adorned with tropical plants, birds, and every other luxury to cheer the Senses around him. Paley and Hazlibt, when they wished to write with unusual care, used to go into the country and take a room in a wayside inn. SHEXLEY wrote his "Revolt of Islam" while lying in a boat on the Thames at Marlow. Burns composed/ bis inspiriting lyric, "Scots Wha Ha'e wi' Wallace Bled," while galloping on horseback over a wild moor in Scotland, and "Tarn O'Shanter" in the woods overhanging the Doon. Bloomfield composed and carried in his memory one-half of his poem, "The Farmer's Boy," without penr ning a word of it, while he was working with other shoemakers in a garret. Doctor Johnson drudged at his great dictionary in a low lodging-house with a cat purring. Cowper's delightful pictures of rural and indoor life, with his satires and lyrics, and the oomic ballad of John GOpin, were penned in a nook which he call«d his boudoir — " a summer-house not bigge;r than a sedanchair." It was SECURE FROM ALL NOISE, and a refuge from all intrusion. The poet Young also wrote much of his verse 1 in a summer-house in a garden. Charles Kihgsley used to over his subjects till he had mastered them, and even clothed his ideas with words, in the open air— in his garden, on the moor, or on the bank of some lonely trout stream. He I Mien dictated what he had thus prepared to I his wife as he walked to and fro in Bis study, seldom altering a phrase or a word. Dryden prepared himself sometimes for literary work by restricting himself to a; cooling diet. He considered STEWED PRUNES as one of the best inducements to heroic composition. He wrote with remarkable ease and rapidity — the result of which was many pages of bad verse as well as some of 'the highest excellence. His "Ode on Saint Cecilia's Day " — one of the most vigorous lyrics in our language — was thrown off at a single jet and in the space of a few i hours. Gibbon, the historian of the monu- i mental "Decline and Fall of the Roman ! Empire," made many experiments in writing • before he could hit the haippy medium between a dull, hum-drum style and rnetorical declamation. ' Wordsworth composed his poearJt in the open air, where, as his rustic neighbours said, lie was always booing about. He used to go to bed on coircluding his morning walk, and, while breakfasting there, dictate the lines ie had put together on the moun- ; tain side. ROGERS, THE BANKER-POET, whose inspiration lasted until he had reached four score and ten, was one of the most fastidious, not to say fussy atud finical, of writers, and is said to have dawdled a fortnight over a single note to his "Italy,'' : consisting of but a few lines. Macaulay's limpid and flowing style was the result of ceaseless k'bour. "He could not rest," says Mr Trevelyan, his biographer, "until every paragraph concluded with a telling sentence; arcd every sentence flowed like running water." Having learned by repeated trials that two pages of his History was as much as he could do at his best in a . day, he called this his task, and was never quite easy unless he completed it daily. GEORGE ELIOT ! toiled on her manuscript six hours a day, throwing her whole force into her work, and yet writing during that time but three or four hundred words. In writing her most powerful passages, " a not herself," she says, took possession of her, and she worked in a state of intense excitement and agitation, as if sho herself were possessed by tho spirits of the people she was portraying. Romola was composed in constant gloom. "I began ib a young woman," she. once tfaid; "i finished it an, old, woman,' 4 j