TWO FORTUNES EARNED IN BED.

Shannon News, 29 March 1923, Page 3

TWO FORTUNES EARNED IN BED.

| Indolence lias produced a good many works of genius. James Thompson not only wrote his famous “Seasons" but also a very characteristic poem, “The Castle of Indolence." He was himself one of the most indolent of men. It was said that he was too lazy to stretch a hand to pick a peach from the wall, but simply stopped and pecked at it where it hung. But whether this is a libel or the truth, it is certain that most of his poetry was composed in a recumbent position. He always wrote best in bed.

Jules Verne, who has written some of the most exciting and adventrous books, and anticipated both the aeroplane and the submarine in his romances, was an indolent man as far as his writing was concerned, for he did most of it lying down. Mark Twain boasted that he spent the greater part of his time in bed. He used to say that all his ideas flew away when he was getting shaved and dressed, and so he stayed in bed to write with excellent results. He earned two fortunes in bed, and was always easy and slow in his movements, even when he was up and moving about he was never in a hurry. He was a good deal like the horses he describes. One used .to lean up against a wall to think, and the other wouldn't start till you lit a fire under it! The poet Swinburne was-of a fiery temper, but of an indolent habit. He confesses somewhere that he wrote “Baudelaire" reclining in a Turkish bath. But few men of great literary gifts were more indolent than the Sage of Fleet Street, the great Dr. Johnson, who seems almost reincarnated in Gilbert K. Chesterton to-day. Only the fear of sheer starvation drove him to his desk. He seldom rose before noon, but he talked far into the night. His diary is filled with remorse for his indolence and he promised to turn over a leaf. Yet the leaf was

never turned. Shelley had an indolent vein, too. He was very fond of the water, and many of his finest poems were composed as he idled at his ease in his boat. He made the best of his short life, however, and that cannot be said of Coleridge, who seemed to be afflicted with the lack of will to work, which some people call laziness. He had one of the greatest minds, but he left his finest poems mere fragments.