CAUTION. WHEN clouds are seen, wise men put on their cloaks; All may be well; but if God sort it so, -Shakespeare. LOVE OF HOME. THE traveler from his native land, Though banished from his mind for years, And sighs to see that spot of earth That knew his childhood's smiles and tears. LXXI.-COST OF WRITING WELL. EXCELLENCE is not matured in a day, and the cost of it is an old story. The beginning of Plato's "Republic," it is said, was found in an old tablet, written over and over in a variety of ways. Addison, we are told, wore out the patience of his printer frequently; when nearly a whole impression of the "Spectator" was worked off, he would stop the press to insert some new proposition. Lamb's most admired essays were the result of intense brain labor; he used to spend days in elaborating a single humorous letter to a friend. Tennyson is reported to have written "Come into the Garden, Maud," more than fifty times over before it pleased him; and his "Locksley Hall," the first draught of which was written in two days, he spent the better part of six weeks, for eight hours a day, in altering and polishing. Dickens, when he intended to write a Christmas story, shut himself up for six weeks, living the life of a hermit, and came out as haggard as a murderer. Balzac, after he had thought out thoroughly one of his philosophical romances, and amassed his materials in a most laborious manner, retired to his study, and from that time until his book went to press society saw him no more. The manuscript was afterward altered and copied, when it passed into the hands of the printer, from whose slips the book was rewritten the third time. Again it went to the printer, two, three, sometimes four separate proofs being required before the author's leave could be got to send the perpetually rewritten book to press, at last, to have it done. Moore thought it quick work if he wrote seventy lines of "Lalla Rookh" in a week. Kinglake's "Eothen," we are told, was rewritten five or six times, and was kept in the author's writing-desk almost as long as Wordsworth kept the "White Doe of Rylsone," and kept like that, to be taken out for review and correction almost every day. Buffon's "Story of Nature" cost him fifty years of labor before he sent it to the printer. "He composed it in a singular manner, writing on large-sized paper, in which, as in a ledger, five distinct columns were ruled. In the first column he wrote down the first thoughts; in the second he corrected, enlarged and pruned it; and so on until he reached the fifth column, within which he finally wrote the results of his labor. But even after this he would compose a sentence twenty times, and once devoted fourteen hours to finding the proper word to round off a period." John Foster often spent hours on a single sentence. Ten years elapsed between the commencement of Goldsmith's "Traveler" and its completion. Le Rochefoucald spent fifteen years in preparing his little book of maxims, altering some of them, Segaris says, nearly thirty times. We all know how Sheridan published his wit and finished his jokes, the same things being found on different bits of paper, differently expressed. Rogers showed Crabb Robinson a note to his "Italy," which he said took him two weeks to write. It consists of a very few lines. LXXII. THE HYPOCRITE. He was a man, Who stole the livery of the court of heaven, To serve the devil in; in virtue's guise, That common sinners durst not meddle with. At sacred feast he sat among the saints, And with his guilty hands touched holiest things; In Scripture terms. He prayed by quantity, All knees were weary. With one hand he put A penny in the urn of poverty, And with the other took a shilling out. On charitable lists,-those trumps which told The public ear who had, in secret, done The poor a benefit, and half the alms They told of took themselves to keep them sounding— Than in the book of life. Seest thou the man! A serpent with an angel's voice! a grave, With flowers bestrewed! and yet, few were deceived. His virtues, being overdone, his face Too grave, his prayers too long, his charities That in his garments opened in spite of him, THE MISER. BUT there is one in folly farther gone, The laughing-stock of demons and of men, Holds wedded intercourse. Ill-guided wretch -Pollok. Thou mayst have seen him at the midnight hour- Of all God made upright, And in their nostrils breathed a living soul, Most fallen, most prone, most earthy, most debased; None bargain on so easy terms with Death. Which hell might be ashamed of, drives the poor -Pollok. LXXIII.—SHORT SELECTIONS. A MERRY HEART. THE merry heart, the merry heart, In joy and sorrow still the same; It gives to beauty half its power, The nameless charm worth all the rest, The light that dances o'er the face, If beauty ne'er have set her seal, It well supplies her absence, too, TRIUMPH. NoT he who rides through conquered city's gate, At head of blazoned hosts, and to the sound Of victors' trumpets, in full pomp and state Of war, the utmost pitch has dreamed or found To which the thrill of triumph can be wound; Not he who by a nation's vast acclaim Is sudden sought and singled out alone, And, unsuspected of the multitude, The force of fate itself has dared defied, And conquered silently. Ah, that soul knows In what white heat the blood of triumph glows! |