Page:Passages from the Life of a Philosopher.djvu/209

Rh more than four lines of verse in any one day of his life. This I can easily understand; for Mr. Rogers' taste was the most fastidious, as well as the most just, I ever met with. Another circumstance also, I think, contributed to this slowness of composition.

An author may adopt either of two modes of composing. He may write off the whole of his work roughly, so as to get upon paper the plan and general outline, without attending at all to the language. He may afterwards study minutely every clause of each sentence, and then every word of each clause.

Or the author may finish and polish each sentence as soon as it is written.

This latter process was, I think, employed by Mr. Rogers, at least in his poetry.

He then told us that Southey composed with much greater rapidity than himself, as well in poetry as in prose. Of the latter Southey frequently wrote a great many pages before breakfast.

Once, at a large dinner party, Mr. Rogers was speaking of an inconvenience arising from the custom, then commencing, of having windows formed of one large sheet of plate-glass. He said that a short time ago he sat at dinner with his back to one of these single panes of plate-glass: it appeared to him that the window was wide open, and such was the force of imagination, that he actually caught cold.

It so happened that I was sitting just opposite to the poet. Hearing this remark, I immediately said, "Dear me, how odd it is, Mr. Rogers, that you and I should make such a very different use of the faculty of imagination. When I go to the house of a friend in the country, and unexpectedly