Page:Biographical and critical studies by James Thomson ("B.V.").djvu/349

 A STRANGE BOOK 333 " As a rule, it requires twice as long to copy a poem as to write one."] Altogether about fifty hours of recreation, after days not unlaborious, are here put in print. The production was attended by no feeling and no fervour, but only by an anxiety of all the cir- cumstant faculties [reason and imagination, as well as will being held in subjection or passivity during the process], to observe the unlooked for [unfore- seen ?] evolution, and to know what would come of it." " The Second Voluspa," done in 50 or 60 minutes, contains 332 lines, in addition to 17 of rhymed in- vocations and answers. It is not indeed rhymed (nearly all the rest are), but it is modelled on the old bardic alliterative structure, perhaps less easy than rhymed verses for a modern Englishman to impro- vise. The next longest pieces, done in from 30 to 45 minutes, contain 128, 136 (two), 144, 152 (four), 156, and 160 lines respectively; some of them rather difficult in construction, abounding in double rhymes, or composed in octaves whose first four lines are rhymed to by the corresponding lines in the second four. The whole body of verse, which occupied "about fifty hours of recreation, after days not un- laborious," fills 395 pages, averaging, I estimate, rather over than under 20 lines a page — say 8000 lines in all, giving an average of about 160 an hour. Such rapidity of writing, without special premedi- tation or preconception, is beyond doubt improvisa- tion. Blake would not revise his Prophetic Books, but we know not at what rate they were produced ; probably the production was comparatively slow, as the text was engraved with the designs. Shelley, the