96 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



was a night-worker and a coffee-drinker, and used to work on cham- 

 pagne. Not only so, but he used an artificial stimulus altogether pe- 

 culiar to himself: he found it impossible, according to the well-known 

 anecdote, to work except in a room filled with the scent of rotten ap- 

 ples, which he kept in a drawer of his writing-table, in order to keep 

 up his necessary mental atmosphere. Shelley's practice of continual- 

 ly munching bread while composing is not a mere piece of trivial 

 gossip when taken in connection with more striking and intelligible 

 attempts to ruin the digestion by way of exciting the brain, and when 

 it is remembered that his delicate and almost feminine organization 

 might require far less to throw it off the balance than naturally 

 stronger frames. At all events, it seems to point to the same in- 

 stinctive craving for abnormal aids to work when the imagination is 

 called upon as if it were not intended that the creative power should 

 be a function of the natural man. Of course there is no need to sup- 

 pose that the stimulus is always or even often adopted with the delib- 

 eration of the actor, who used to sup on underdone pork-chops to in- 

 spire himself with the mood proper to tragedy. Nor need the stimu- 

 lus be of a kind to produce intoxication, in the vulgar sense of the 

 word. So long as it puts the body into a non-natural condition, in the 

 way pointed out by individual instinct, it seems that the physical con- 

 ditions of imaginative work are fulfilled. 



Unfortunately for any complete treatment of the question, a suflB- 

 cient body of data is not easily gathered. Great artists, in all fields 

 of work, are notoriously shy of publishing their processes, even when 

 they themselves know what their processes are. It is, however, always 

 legitimate to argue from the known to the probable ; and if it can be 

 gathered that all great imaginative work, whenever the process is 

 known, has been accompanied with some abnormal habit, however 

 slight, it is fair enough to assume that the relation of cause and effect 

 has something to do with the matter, and that some such habit may 

 be suspected where processes are not known. There are, however, 

 two great imaginative authors of the very first rank whom believers 

 in the pleasant doctrine that the highest and freest work can be done 

 under the healthiest conditions of fresh air, early hours, daylight, and 

 temperance which does not mean abstinence have always claimed 

 for their own. One of these is Goethe. He and Balzac are at pre- 

 cisely opposite poles in their way of working. Here is the account 

 of Goethe's days at Weimar, according to Mr. G. H. Lewes : He rose 

 at seven. Till eleven he worked without interruption. A cup of 

 chocolate was then brought, and he worked on again till one. At two 

 he dined. " His appetite was immense. Even on the days when he 

 complained of not being hungry he ate much more than most men. 

 ... He sat a long while over his wine, chatting gayly, for he never 

 dined alone. ... He was fond of wine, and drank daily his two or 

 three bottles." There was no dessert Balzac's principal meal nor 



