WHAT IT COSTS TO WHITE WELL.

Thames Star, Volume VIII, Issue 2870, 27 April 1878, Page 2

WHAT IT COSTS TO WHITE WELL.

Excellence is not matured in a day, and the cost of it it an old story. The beginning of Plato's " Republic," it is said, was found in an old tablet written over in a Variety of ways. Addison, we are told, wore out the patience of his printer; frequently, when nearly the whole impression of the Spectator was worked off,' he would stop the press to insert some new proposition. Lamb's most sportive essays were the result of most intense brain labor; he used to spend a week at a time in elaborating a single humorous letter to a friend. Tennyson is reported to have writ* ten " Come into the Garden, Maud," more than fifty times orer before it pleased him; and "Loeksley Hall," the first draft of which was written in two days, he spent the better part of six weeks, eight hours a day, in altering and polishing. Dickens, when he intended to write a Christmas story, shut himself up for six weeks, living the life of a hermit, and coming out as haggard as a murderer. Balxaek, after he had thought out thoroughly one of his philosophical romances, and amassed his materials in a most laborious manner, retired to his study, and from that time until his book went to press,' society saw him no more. -When he appeared among his friends, he looked, Said his publisher, in the popular phrase, like his own ghost. Jhe manuscript was afterwards altered arid copied, when it passed into the hands of the printer, from whose slips the hooka were rewritten a third time. Again it went into the hands of the printer —two, three and sometimes four .- separate proofs being required before the author's leave could be got to send the perpetually re-written book to press at last to hare it done. He was literally the terror of all printers aud.editors. • Moore thought it quick work if he wrote seventy lines of "Lalla Bookh" in a week. Kinglake's "Eotheif," we are told, was re-written fire, or; six times, and was kept in the author's writing desk almost as long as Wordsworth kept the " White Doe of Bylstone," and kept like that, to be taken out for review and correction almost erery day. Buffon's " Story of Nature " cost him fifty years of labor before ho sent it to the printer. " He composed it in a singular manner, writing on large-sized paper, in which, as in a ledger, five distinct columns were ruled. In the first column lie wrote down the first thoughts; in the second he corrected, enlarged, and pruned it; and so on until he reached the fifth column, within which he finally wrote the results of his labor. But eren after this he would compose a sentence twenty times and once devoted fourteen hours to finding the proper word to round off a period." John foster often spent hours on a single sentence. Ten years elapsed between the commencement of Goldsmith's " Traveller " and its completion. La Bochefoucauld spent fifteen years in preparing his little book of maxims, alter* ing some of them, Segaris says, nearly thirty times. We all know how Sheridan polished his wit and finished his jokes, the same things bejng found on different bits of paper differently expressed. Bogers showed Crabbe Bobinson a note of his "Italy," which he said took him two weeks to write. It consists of a very few lines. '■ "'■■.'■• ■'. .