98 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



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 pecu- 

 liarity, and between breakfast and luncheon, with rare exceptions, was 

 his time of work. But his daily walks were less of rule than of enjoy- 

 ment and necessity. In the midst of his writing they were indispen- 

 sable, 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 niglit ; so that in the 

 matter of hours he must be taken as having conformed in some im- 

 l^ortant respects to Balzac's hygiene. Now, Goethe was also an essen- 

 tially out-of-doors man by nature not one to let his pen do his imagin- 

 ing for him. He was no slave of the ink-bottle as some are, who can- 

 not 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 w^alls 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 drunken- 

 ness 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 w^heu 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 be- 

 tween the words. The very two novels wherein the creative power 

 of the arch-master of romance shows itself most strongly were com- 

 posed 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 whicb 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. Apropos 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 



