Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 7.djvu/108

98 had lodged so long over the clattering of the traffic and the tumult of the streets, that he had been trained not only to be indifferent to noise, but even to require it for the prosecution of his studies." So we learn from Mr, Forster that "method in every thing was Dickens's peculiarity, and between breakfast and luncheon, with rare exceptions, was his time of work. But his daily walks were less of rule than of enjoyment and necessity. In the midst of his writing they were indispensable, and especially, as it has often been shown, at night," When he had work on hand he walked all over the town, furiously and in all weathers, to the injury of his health. And his walks, be it observed, were frequently what Balzac's always were—at night; so that in the matter of hours he must be taken as having conformed in some important respects to Balzac's hygiene. Now, Goethe was also an essentially out-of-doors man by nature—not one to let his pen do his imagining for him. He was no slave of the ink-bottle as some are, who cannot think without the feather of a goose in their hands, by way of a sometimes appropriate talisman. There is a well-known passage in one of the Roman Elegies to the effect that inspiration is to be sought more directly than within the four walls of a study, and that the rhythm of the hexameter is not best drummed with the lingers on a wooden table. And if it is true, as he tells, that "youth is drunkenness without wine," it seems to follow, according to his experience, that those two or three bottles of wine are not altogether needless as an aid to inspiration when youth is gone by.

The fellow-instance of imaginative work triumphantly carried on under the most admirable healthy conditions is that of Scott, He used to finish the principal part of his day's work before breakfast, and, even when busiest, seldom worked as late as noon. And the end of that apparently most admirably healthy working-life we also know. "Ivanhoe" and "The Bride of Lammermoor" were dictated under the terrible stimulus of physical pain which wrung groans from him between the words. The very two novels wherein the creative power of the arch-master of romance shows itself most strongly were composed in the midst of literal birth-throes. It was then he made that grimmest of all bad puns—"When his audible suffering filled every pause, 'Nay, Willie,'" addressing Laidlaw, who wrote for him and implored him to rest, "'only see that the doors are fast. I would fain keep all the cry as well as all the wool to ourselves; but as to giving over work that can only be done when I am in woolen.'" So far from affording any argument to the contrary, the history of the years during which his hand was losing its cunning seems to illustrate the penalty of trying to reconcile two irreconcilable things—the exercise of the imagination to its fullest extent, and the observance of conditions that are too healthy to nourish a fever. À propos of his review of Ritson's "Caledonian Annals," he himself says, "No one that has not labored as I have done on imaginary topics can judge of