Genius in Sunshine and Shadow

Unlike Handel's mode of composition, Mozart played his music upon the harpsichord before he wrote a note of it upon paper; but he had a most exalted idea of his mission, and prepared himself for composition, not by partaking of a hearty dinner, but by reading favorite classic authors for hours before beginning what was to him a sacred task. His favorite authors on such occasions were Dante and Petrarch. He chose the morning for his compositions; but he would often delay writing his scores for the musicians until it was too late to copy them, and sometimes failed altogether to write out the part intended to be performed by himself; yet when the moment arrived, so perfectly had all been arranged in his mind, he played it without hesitation, instrument in hand. The Emperor Joseph, before whom he was performing on one occasion, observed that the music-sheet before him contained no characters whatever, and asked, "Where is your part?" "Here," replied Mozart, pointing with his finger to his forehead.70 He became blind before he was forty years of age, but continued to compose. The duet and chorus in "Judas Maccabæus," and some others of his finest efforts were produced after his total deprivation of sight; nor did he cease to conduct his oratorios in public on account of his blindness.

Spontini, the Italian composer, like Sarti, could only produce his music in the dark, dictating to some one sitting in an adjoining room. Rossini, author of the "Barber of Seville," composed his music as the elder Dumas was accustomed to write; namely, in bed. Offenbach, of opera-bouffe notoriety, almost lived on coffee while creating his dainty aerial music. The writer of these pages met this composer in Paris in 1873, when he was at the height of his popularity, and was told by him that he took no wine or spirit until after his work of composition was completed. Cimarosa, the Italian composer, who won national fame before he was twenty-five, derived his inspiration from the noisy crowd. Auber, the French composer, could write only among the green fields and the silence of the country. Sacchini, another Italian composer, lost the thread of his inspiration unless attended by his favorrite cats, they sitting all about him while he worked, some upon the table, some on the floor, and one always perched contentedly between his shoulders on his neck; he declared that their purring was to him a soothing anodyne, and fitted him for composition by making him content. Eugène Sue would not take up his pen except in full dress and with white kids on his hands. Thus he produced the "Mysteries of Paris," which Dumas designated as "one-gross-of-gloves long." Buffon would only sit down to write after taking a bath and donning pure linen with a full frilled bosom. Haydn71 declared that he could not compose unless he wore the large seal-ring which Frederick the Great had given him. He would sit wrapped in silence for an hour or more, after which he would seize his pen and write rapidly without touching a musical instrument; and he rarely altered a line. In early life, poor, freezing in a miserable garret, he studied the rudiments of his favorite art by the side of an old broken harpsichord. For a period of six years he endured a bitter conflict with poverty, being often compelled for the sake of warmth to lie in bed most of the day as well as the night. Finally he was relieved from this thraldom by the generosity of his patron, Prince Esterhazy, a passionate lover of music, who appointed him his chapel-master, with a salary sufficient to keep him supplied with the ordinary comforts of life.

Crébillon the elder, a celebrated lyric poet and member of the French Academy, was enamoured of solitude, and could only write effectively under such circumstances. His imagination teemed with romances, and he produced eight or ten dramas which enjoyed popularity in their day, – about 1776. One day, when he was alone and in a deep reverie, a friend entered his study hastily. "Don't disturb me," cried the author, "I am enjoying a moment of happiness: I am going to hang a villain of a minister, and banish another who is an idiot."

We have lately mentioned Dumas. Hans Christian Andersen, speaking of the various habits of authors, thus refers to the elder Dumas, with whom he was intimate: "I generally found him in bed, even long after mid-day, where he lay, with pen, ink, and paper by his side, and wrote his newest drama. On entering his apartment I found him thus one day; he nodded kindly to me, and said: 'Sit down a minute. I have just now a visit from my Muse; she will be going directly.' He wrote on, and after a brief silence shouted 'Vivat' sprang out of bed, and said, 'The third act is finished!'"72

Lamartine was peculiar in his mode of composition, and never saw his productions, after the first draft, until they were printed, bound, and issued to the public. He was accustomed to walk forth in his park during the after part of the day, or of a moonlit evening, with pencil and pieces of paper, and whatever ideas struck him he recorded. That was the end of the matter so far as he was concerned. These pieces of paper he threw into a special box, without a number or title upon them. His literary secretary with much patient ability assorted these papers, arranged them as he thought best, and sold them to the publishers at a royal price. We know of no similar instance where authorship and recklessness combined have produced creditable results. Certainly such indifference argued only the presence of weakness and irresponsibility, which were indeed prominent characteristics of Lamartine.

The remarkable facility with which Goethe's poems were produced is said to have resembled improvisation, an inspiration almost independent of his own purposes. "I had come," he says, "to regard the poetic talent dwelling in me entirely as nature; the rather that I was directed to look upon external nature as its proper subject. The exercise of this poetic gift might be stimulated and determined by occasion, but it flowed forth more joyfully and richly, when it came involuntarily, or even against my will." Addison, whose style is perhaps the nearest to perfection in ancient or modern literature, did not reach that standard without much patient labor. Pope tells us that "he would show his verses to several friends, and would alter nearly everything that any of them hinted was wrong. He seemed to be distrustful of himself, and too much concerned about his character as a poet, or, as he expressed it, 'too solicitous for that kind of praise which God knows is a very little matter after all.'" Pope himself published nothing until it had been a twelvemonth on hand, and even then the printer's proofs were full of alterations. On one occasion this was carried so far that Dodsley, his publisher, thought it better to have the whole recomposed than to attempt to make the necessary alterations. Yet Pope admits that "the things that I have written fastest have always pleased the most. I wrote the 'Essay on Criticism' fast, for I had digested all the matter in prose before I began it in verse."

"I never work better," says Luther, "than when I am inspired by anger: when I am angry, I can write, pray, and preach well; for then my whole temperament is quickened, my understanding sharpened, and all mundane vexations and temptations depart." We are reminded of Burke's remark in this connection: "A vigorous mind is as necessarily accompanied with violent passions as a great fire with great heat." Luther, however ribald he may have been at times, had the zeal of honesty. There was not a particle of vanity or self-sufficiency in the great reformer. "Do not call yourselves Lutherans," he said to his followers; "call yourselves Christians. Who and what is Luther? Has Luther been crucified for the world?"

Churchill,73 the English poet and satirist, was so averse to correcting and blotting his manuscript that many errors were unexpunged, and many lines which might easily have been improved were neglected. When expostulated with upon this subject by his publisher, he replied that erasures were to him like cutting away so much of his flesh; thus expressing his utter repugnance to an author's most urgent duty. Though Macaulay tells us that his vices were not so great as his virtues, still he was dissipated and licentious. Cowper was a great admirer of his poetry, and called him "the great Churchill." George Wither,74 the English poet, satirist, and political writer, was compelled to watch and fast when he was called upon to write. He "went out of himself," as he said, at such times, and if he tasted meat or drank one glass of wine he could not produce a verse or sentence.

Rogers, who wrote purely con amore, took all the time to perfect his work which his fancy dictated, and certainly over-refined many of his compositions. The "Pleasures of Memory" occupied him seven years. In writing, composing, re-writing, and altering his "Columbus" and "Human Life," each required just double that period of time before the fastidious author felt satisfied to call it finished. Besides this, the second edition of each went through another series of emendations. The observant reader will find that Rogers has often weakened his first and best thoughts by this elaboration. The expression of true genius oftenest comes, like the lightning, in its full power and effect at the first flash. "Every event that a man would master," says Holmes, "must be mounted on the run, and no man ever caught the reins of a thought except as it galloped by him." One who has had years of active editorial experience on the daily press can hardly conceive of such fastidious slowness of composition as characterizes some authors. Sir Joshua Reynolds, in speaking of Rogers, Rochefoucauld, Cowper, and others, and their dilatory habits of composition, says, that although men of ordinary talents may be highly satisfied with their productions, men of genius never are, – an assumption which is not borne out by facts, as we shall have occasion to show in these chapters. Modesty is not always the characteristic of genius; and very few popular writers are without a due share of vanity in their natures.

Voltaire somewhere says that an author should write with the rapidity which genius inspires, but should correct with care and deliberation; which doubtless expresses the process adopted by this unscrupulous but versatile writer, of whom Carlyle said: "With the single exception of Luther, there is perhaps, in these modern ages, no other man of a merely intellectual character, whose influence and reputation have become so entirely European as that of Voltaire." Sydney Smith was so rapid a producer that he had not patience even to read over his compositions when finished. He would throw down his manuscript and say: "There, it is done; now, Kate, do look it over, and put dots to the i's and strokes to the t's." He was once advised by a fashionable publisher to attempt a three-volume novel. "Well," said he, after some seeming consideration, "if I do so, I must have an archdeacon for my hero, to fall in love with the pew-opener, with the clerk for a confidant; tyrannical interference of the church-wardens; clandestine correspondence concealed under the hassock; appeal to the parishioners," etc. He was overflowing with humor to the very close of life. He wrote to Lady Carlisle during his last illness, saying, "If you hear of sixteen or eighteen pounds of human flesh, they belong to me. I look as if a curate had been taken out of me."

Buffon caused his "Époques de la Nature" to be copied eighteen times, so many corrections and changes were made. As he was then (1778) over seventy years of age, one would think this an evidence that his mind was failing him. Pope covered with memoranda every scrap of clear paper which came in his way. Some of his most elaborate literary work was begun and finished on the backs of old letters and bits of yellow wrappers. We do not wonder that such fragmentary manuscript always suggested the idea of revision and correction. It is difficult to understand why Pope should have assumed this small virtue of economy and yet often have been lavish in other directions; indeed, it may be questioned whether it was intended to be an act of economy. Such petty parsimony is inexplicable, but certainly it grew into a fixed habit with him. We believe it was Swift who first called him "paper-saving Pope;" but Swift was nearly as eccentric a paper-saver as Pope. He wrote to Dr. Sheridan: "Keep very regular accounts, in large books and a fair hand; not like me, who, to save paper, confuse everything!" Miss Mitford had the same habit of writing upon waste scraps of paper, fly-leaves of books, envelopes, and odd rejected bits, all in so small a hand as to be nearly illegible. William Hazlitt was also remarkable for the same practice, and we are told that he even made the first outline of some of his essays on the walls of his chamber, much to the annoyance of his landlady.

Some idea of the rapidity with which Byron wrote may be inferred from the fact that the "Prisoner of Chillon" was written in two days and sent away complete to the printer. The traveller in Switzerland does not fail to visit the house – once a wayside inn, at Merges, on the Lake of Geneva – where Byron wrote this poem while detained by a rainstorm, in 1816. On the heights close at hand is the Castle of Wuffens, dating back to the tenth century. Morges is a couple of leagues from Lausanne, and the spot where Gibbon finished his "Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire," in 1787. Colton, the philosophical but erratic author of "Lacon," wrote that entire volume upon covers of letters and such small scraps of paper as happened to be at hand when a happy thought inspired him. Having completed a sentence, and rounded it to suit his fancy, he threw it into a pile with hundreds of others, which were finally turned over to the printer in a cloth bag. No classification or system of arrangement was observed. Colton exhibited all the singularities that only too often characterize genius, especially as regards improvidence and recklessness of habit. He lived unattended, in a single room in Princes Street, Soho, London, in a neglected apartment containing scarcely any furniture. He wrote very illegibly upon a rough deal table with a stumpy pen. He was finally so pressed with debts that he absconded to avoid his London creditors, though he held the very comfortable vicarage of Kew, in Surrey.

Montaigne, the French philosopher and essayist, whose writings have been translated into every modern tongue, like the musician Sacchini was marvellously fond of cats, and would not sit down to write without his favorite by his side. Thomas Moore required complete isolation when he did literary work, and shut himself up, as did Charles Dickens. He was a very slow and painstaking producer. Some friend having congratulated him upon the seeming facility and appropriateness with which a certain line was introduced into a poem he had just published, Moore replied, "Facility! that line cost me hours of patient labor to achieve." His verses, which read so smoothly, and which appear to have glided so easily from his pen, were the result of infinite labor and patience. His manuscript, like Tennyson's, was written, amended, rewritten, and written again, until it was finally satisfactory to his critical ear and fancy. "Easy writing," said Sheridan, "is commonly damned hard reading."

Bishop Warburton tells us that he could "only write in a hand-to-mouth style" unless he had all his books about him; and that the blowing of an east wind, or a fit of the spleen, incapacitated him for literary work; and still another English bishop could write only when in full canonicals, a fact which he frankly admitted. Milton would not attempt to compose except between the vernal and autumnal equinoxes, at which season his poetry came as if by inspiration, and with scarcely a mental effort.75 Thomson, Collins, and Gray entertained very similar ideas, which when expressed so incensed Dr. Johnson that he publicly ridiculed them. Crabbe fancied that there was something in the effect of a sudden fall of snow that in an extraordinary manner stimulated him to poetic composition; while Lord Orrery found no stimulant equal to a fit of the gout! – all of which fancies are but mild forms of monomania. James Hogg (the Ettrick Shepherd) was only too glad to write without any of these accessories, when he could get any material to write upon. He used to employ a bit of slate, for want of the necessary paper and ink. The son of an humble Scottish farmer, he experienced all sorts of misfortunes in his endeavors to pursue literature as a calling. He was both a prose and poetic writer of considerable native genius, and formed one of the well-drawn characters of Christopher North's "Noctes Ambrosianæ." N. P. Willis in the latter years of his life was accustomed to ride on horseback before he sat down to write. He believed there was a certain nervo-vital influence imparted from the robust health and strength of the animal to the rider, as he once told the writer of these pages; and, so far as one could judge, the influence upon himself certainly favored such a conclusion.

Some authors frankly acknowledge that they have not the necessary degree of patience to apply themselves to the correction of their manuscripts. Ovid, the popular Roman poet, admitted this. Such people may compose with pleasure, but there is the end; neither a sense of responsibility nor a desire for correctness can overcome their constitutional laziness. Pope, Dryden, Moore, Coleridge, Swift, – in short, nine-tenths of the popular authors of the past and the present, all change, correct, amplify, or contract, and interline more or less every page of manuscript which they produce, and often to such a degree as greatly to confuse the compositors. Richard Savage, the unfortunate English poet, could not, or would not, bring himself to correct his faulty sentences, being greatly indebted to the intelligence of the proof-reader for the presentable form in which his writings finally appeared. Julius Scaliger, a celebrated scholar and critic, was, on the other hand, an example of remarkable correctness, so that his manuscript and the printer's pages corresponded exactly, page for page and line for line. Hume,76 the historian, was never done with his manifold corrections; his sense of responsibility was unlimited, and his appreciation of his calling was grand. Fénelon and Gibbon were absolutely correct in their first efforts; and so was Adam Smith, though he dictated to an amanuensis.

We are by no means without sympathy for those writers who dread and avoid the reperusal and correction of their manuscripts. Only those who are familiar with the detail of book-making can possibly realize its trying minutiæ. When one has finished the composition and writing of a chapter, his work is only begun; it must be read and re-read with care, to be sure of absolute correctness. When once in type, it must be again carefully read for the correction of printer's errors, and again revised by second proof; and finally a third proof is necessary, to make sure that all errors previously marked have been corrected. By this time, however satisfactory in composition, the text becomes "more tedious than a twice-told tale." Any author must be singularly conceited who can, after such experience, take up a chapter or book of his own production and read it with any great degree of satisfaction. Godeau, Bishop of Venice, used to say that "to compose is an author's heaven; to correct, an author's purgatory; but to revise the press, an author's hell!"

Guido Reni, whose superb paintings are among the gems of the Vatican, in the height of his fame would not touch pencil or brush except in full dress. He ruined himself by gambling and dissolute habits, and became lost as to all ambition for that art which had been so grand a mistress to him in the beginning. He finally arrived at that stage where he lost at the gaming-table and in riotous living what he earned by contract under one who managed his affairs, giving him a stipulated sum for just so much daily work in his studio. Such was the famous author of that splendid example of art, the "Martyrdom of Saint Peter," in the Vatican. Parmigiano, the eminent painter, was full of the wildness of genius. He became mad after the philosopher's stone, jilting art as a mistress, though his eager creditors forced him to set once more to work, though to little effect.

Great painters, like great writers, have had their peculiar modes of producing their effects. Thus Domenichino was accustomed to assume and enact before the canvas the passion and character he intended to depict with the brush. While engaged upon the "Martyrdom of Saint Andrew," Caracci, a brother painter, came into his studio and found him in a violent passion. When this fit of abstraction had passed, Caracci embraced him, admitting that Domenichino had proved himself his master, and that he had learned from him the true manner of expressing sentiment or passion upon the canvas.

Richard Wilson, the eminent English landscape-painter, strove in vain, he said, to paint the motes dancing in the sunshine. A friend coming into his studio found the artist sitting dejected on the floor, looking at his last work. The new-comer examined the canvas and remarked critically that it looked like a broad landscape just after a shower. Wilson started to his feet in delight, saying, "That is the effect I intended to represent, but thought I had failed." Poor Wilson possessed undoubted genius, but neglected his art for brandy, and was himself neglected in turn. He was one of the original members of the Royal Academy.

Undoubtedly, genius is at times nonplussed and at fault, like plain humanity, and is helped out of a temporary dilemma by accident, – as when Poussin the painter, having lost all patience in his fruitless attempts to produce a certain result with the brush, impatiently dashed his sponge against the canvas and brought out thereby the precise effect desired; namely, the foam on a horse's mouth.

Washington Allston77 is recalled to us in this connection, one of the most eminent of our American painters, and a poet of no ordinary pretensions. "The Sylphs of the Seasons and other Poems" was published in 1813. He was remarkable for his graphic and animated conversational powers, and was the warm personal friend of Coleridge and Washington Irving. Irving says, "His memory I hold in reverence and affection as one of the purest, noblest, and most intellectual beings that ever honored me with his friendship." While living in London he was elected associate of the Royal Academy. Bostonians are familiar with Allston's half-finished picture of "Belshazzar's Feast," upon which he was engaged when death snatched him from his work.

CHAPTER IV

It has been said that the first three men in the world were a gardener, a ploughman, and a grazier; while all political economists admit that the real wealth and stamina of a nation must be looked for among the cultivators of the soil. Was it not Swift who declared that the man who could make two ears of corn or two blades of grass grow upon a spot of ground where only one grew before, deserved better of mankind than the whole race of politicians? Bacon, Cowley, Sir William Temple, Buffon, and Addison were all attached to horticulture, and more or less time was devoted by them to the cultivation of trees and plants of various sorts; nor did they fail to record the refined delight and the profit they derived therefrom. Daniel Webster was an enthusiastic agriculturist; so were Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Walter Scott, Horace Greeley, Gladstone, Evarts,78 Wilder, Loring, Poore, and a host of other contemporaneous and noted men. "They who labor in the earth," said Jefferson, "are the chosen people of God."

But the habits and mode of composition adopted by literary men still crowd upon the memory. Hobbes, the famous English philosopher, author of a "Treatise on Human Nature," a political work entitled the "Leviathan," etc., was accustomed to compose in the open air. The top of his walking-stick was supplied with pen and inkhorn, and he would pause anywhere to record his thoughts in the note-book always carried in his pocket. Virgil rose early in the morning and wrote at a furious rate innumerable verses, which he afterwards pruned and altered and polished, as he said, after the manner of a bear licking her cubs into shape. The Earl of Roscommon, in his "Essay on Translated Verse," declared this to be the duty of the poet, —

"To write with fury and correct with phlegm."