Page:Letters of Life.djvu/379

Rh effusions, not considering it decorous to throw crude matter at the head of the public.

This habit of writing currente calamo is fatal to literary ambition. It prevents that labor of thought by which intellectual eminence is acquired. Miss Edgeworth, however, thinks fit thus to commend it: "Few persons of genius have possessed what Mrs. Sigourney appears to have—the power of writing extempore on passing subjects, and at the moment they chance to be called for. She must have great command over her own mind, or what a celebrated physician used to call 'voluntary attention,' in which most people are so lamentably deficient, that they can never write any thing well when called upon for it, or when the subject is suggested and the effort bespoken. Those powers are twice as valuable that can well accomplish their purpose on demand. Certainly, as it respects poetic gifts, those who give promptly give twice. How few, even of professed and eminent poets, have been able to produce any effusion worthy of their reputation, or even worth reading on what the French call 'des sujets de commande,' or what we English describe as on the 'spur of the moment!' Gray could not—Addison could not. Mrs. Sigourney's friends will doubtless be ready to bear testimony that she can."

With the establishment of a poetic name came a host of novel requisitions. Fame gathered from abroad cut out work at home. The number and