Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 128.djvu/825

Rh the people came running up-stairs to know the cause of the deluge. At his death he left, besides his finished works, a quantity of rough sketches, containing doubtless the germs of many more works, which never passed the stage in which they appear there. The first draughts of his well-known compositions show the successive alterations which their subjects suffered before they pleased him ; and these form a most interesting study, as exposing his manner of working. One of his sketch-books has been published in extenso, and, besides a host of matters of minor interest, it contains three separate draughts, at length, of the finale of one of his symphonies — a striking proof of the patience with which this great and fiery genius perfected his masterpieces. Even when completely finished, and perfected to his own satisfaction, his MSS. presented many diffculties to the reader, and his copyists and engravers are said to have had a hard time of it. In one of his letters, in which he gives his publishers the corrections of some proofs of a stringed quartet, he concludes by saying that "it is four o'clock. I must post this: and I am quite hoarse with stamping and swearing!"

The handwriting of Mendelssohn was beautifully neat, and his manner of correcting the proofs of his printed works excessively careful and painstaking. The same may be said of his very extensive correspondence. Few men, probably no composers, ever wrote more letters — they must have been a tremendous tax upon his time and patience — and yet the smallest note is as accurately expressed and carefully written as if it were a State paper. In composing he made few sketches, but built up the whole in his mind, and then, when writing down the score thus mentally prepared, rather invited his friends' conversation than otherwise. " Pray come in," said he on one such occasion, " I am merely copying.'" On the other hand, he was fastidious to a fault in allowing his music finally to leave his hands for the publisher. The beautiful "Italian Symphony" was kept back by him till his death, the "Walpurgis-night" nearly as long, and some of the finest numbers in " Elijah " and the " Hymn of Praise " were added after the first performance. No musician more thorougldy appreciated the maxim that what is worth doing is worth doing well, or more consistently carried it into practice.

It was in a dream, — or, more properly speaking, a nightmare, — that Tartini com- posed his famous sonata for the violin, called the "Trillo del Diavolo." Rossini, I if reports may be believed, could not compose at any time so well as immediately I after supper. When he was young, as the j storv' goes, he was once writing an opera I for the carnival of an Italian town; and I the weather being bitterly cold, and his j purse absolutely empty, he remained in I bed, in order to keep himself warm while he wrote. Just as he was finishing a duet, the principal morceaii in the opera, the paper slipped from his hands, and floated and fluttered under the bed. He reached out as far as he could without quitting the bed, first on one side and then on the other, but without being able to recover the piece. He therefore resigned himself to his fate and wrote it over again. A friend came in presently, and hearing what had happened, fished up the first duet, which proved to be altogether different from the second version.

Meyerbeer's imagination was powerfully excited during thunderstorms ; at such times he would retire to his room and write with freedom and spirit. Ha- levy, with more domestic tastes, when his inspiration failed him, would put a kettle on the fire ; and as it simmered and boiled, his mind gradually recovered its usual ac- tivity, and his ideas flowed again in abun- dance. Auber loved being on horseback, and while the animal was galloping, his thoughts came with facility and speed. Mozart confessed a similar thing. "It is when travelling in a carriage, or walking after dinner," writes he to Baron V., "that my ideas flow best and most abundantly." Many persons of less eminence than Mozart or Auber have experienced the same effect from the motion of a hansom cab. But while Auber was happy on the gallop, Adolphe Adam, on the other hand, when at a loss for ideas, loved to bury himself with his cats, under a thick quilt of eider-down.

Readers of Mr. Forster's biography of Charles Dickens will remember his nocturnal expeditions, and how, when putting together the plot of a story, he would pace the deserted streets of London at night for hours. Many a page of his novels, teeming with punch-bowls and joviality, was thus soberly imagined. On the other hand, Ben Jonson, according to an entry
 * in his manuscript journal, preserved at

Dulwich College, wrote best when drunk: — "Memorandum. Upon the 20th of May, the king (heaven reward him!) sent me 100l. At that time I often went to the Devil Tavern, and before I had spent 40l. of it, wrote my 'Alchymist.' ... I laid