HIS METHOD OF WRITING 425 



culiarly rich, for in his mental house there were many mansions 

 into which at will he could enter. Whatever struggle there may 

 originally have been between poetic imagination and scientific 

 research, the two were not only reconciled, but during the last 

 fruitful years of his life fused into one in such books as "The 

 Interpretation of Nature" and "The Individual." It was not 

 only when his mind travelled into the realm of poetry that time 

 and eternity, the vast and the mysterious, were present with 

 him. These phenomena ever underlay his thought, and because 

 of this solemn undertone often there was a note of pathos in 

 what he wrote markedly so in early manhood ; and later his 

 pen continued to obey the dictation of a subconscious sadness, a 

 sadness which in a measure was lost in the world of activity, 

 where he practised a self-sufficing stoicism, but which, in the 

 world of reflection, showed itself continually. 



So far as the actual process of writing was concerned, Mr. 

 Shaler could write at any time and anywhere ; he was unfamiliar 

 with the coaxing habit indulged in by some authors. He knew 

 nothing of "moods" or "atmospheres," nor did he make osten- 

 tatious preparations for the act. All he wanted was his Morris 

 chair, a tablet, a lead pencil, and his long-stemmed pipe. He did 

 not care for what is known as "the frippery of erudition" and 

 was without the solicitudes of those who strive for faultless 

 lines ; indeed he produced too rapidly to keep his mind for long 

 at the critic's level. What erasures he made were done at the 

 moment with the rubber end of his pencil, a labor-saving con- 

 trivance to which he was wont to sing a hymn of praise. His 

 writings are seldom cumbered with quotations, and if any came 

 to his mind he was apt to brush them aside in his effort to 

 express himself. He wrote freely and easily, but no amount of 

 talent, unsupported by his steady-pulling diligence, would have 

 enabled him, amid so many distractions, to fill out the long and 

 varied list of his writings. 



Mr. Shaler's first published scientific works of any importance 

 were his list of Anticosti Brachiopods, and later, in 1876, The 



