LITERARIANA.

Grey River Argus, Volume V, Issue 361, 7 May 1868, Page 3

LITERARIANA.

Mr Charles Dickens' favorite time for composition is said to be in the morning, when he writes till about one or two o'clock, then he has his luncheon, and walks out for two hours, returns to dinner, and either goes out or spends the evening at his own fireside. Sometimes his method of Labor is much more intent and unremitting. Of his delightful Christinas book, " The Chimes," the author says in a letter to a friend, that he shut himself up for a month, close and tight over it. ' ' All my affections and passions got twined and knotted up in it, and I became as haggered as a murderer long before I wrote 'The End.' When I had done that, like ' The Man of Thessaly,' who scratched his eyes out in a quickset hedge, plunged into a bramble- bush to scratch them in again, I fled to Venice to recover the composure I had disturbed." When his imagination begins to outline a new novel, with vague thoughts rife within him, he goes " wandering about at night in the strangest places/ he says, " Booking rest and finding none." Lord Lytton (Bulwer) accomplished his voluminous productions in about three hours a day, usually from ten until one, and seldom later, writing all with his own hand. Composition was at first very laborious to him, but he gave himself sedulously to mastering its difficulties ; and is said to have re-written some of his briefer productions eight or nine times before publication. Ho writes very rapidly, averaging it is said twenty octavo pages a day. He says of himself, in a letter to a friend:— '< I literatise away the morning, ride at three, go to baths at five, dine at six, and get through the evening as I best may, sometimes by correcting a proof." The following account of the late Douglas Jerrold's " method in writing," was sketched during his lifetime by a friend who knew him well -■— " At eight o'clock he breakfasts, and then reads the papers, cutting out bits of news. The study is a snug room, filled with books and pictures ; its furniture is of solid oak. There work begins. If it be a comedy he will now and then walk rapidly up and down the room, talking wildly to himself, and laughing as he hits upon a good point. Suddenly the pen will be put down, and through a little conservatory, without seeing anybody, he will pass out into the garden for a little while, talking to the gardeners, walking, &c. In again, and vehemently to work. The thought has come; and in letters smaller than the type in which it shall bo set, it is unrolled along the little blue slips of paper. A crust of bread and glass of wine are brought in, but no word is spoken. The work goes rapidly forward, and halts at last suddenly. The pen is dashed aside, a few letters, seldom more than three lines in each, are written and despatched to the post, and then again in to the garden, visits to the horse, cow, and fowls, then another long turn round the lawn, and at last a seat with a quaint old volume in the tent under the mulberry tree. Friends come — walks and conversation. A very simple dinner at four. Then a short nap— forty winks — upon the great sofa in the study ; another long stroll over tho lawn while tea is prepared. Over the tho tea-table are jokes of all kinds, as at dinner. In the latter years of his life Jerrold seldom wrote after dinner; and his evenings were usually spent alone in his study."