We are by no means without sympathy for those writers who dread and avoid the reperusal and correction of their manuscripts. Only those who are familiar with the detail of book-making can possibly realize its trying minutiæ. When one has finished the composition and writing of a chapter, his work is only begun; it must be read and re-read with care, to be sure of absolute correctness. When once in type, it must be again carefully read for the correction of printer's errors, and again revised by second proof; and finally a third proof is necessary, to make sure that all errors previously marked have been corrected. By this time, however satisfactory in composition, the text becomes "more tedious than a twice-told tale." Any author must be singularly conceited who can, after such experience, take up a chapter or book of his own production and read it with any great degree of satisfaction. Godeau, Bishop of Venice, used to say that "to compose is an author's heaven; to correct, an author's purgatory; but to revise the press, an author's hell!"
Guido Reni, whose superb paintings are among the gems of the Vatican, in the height of his fame would not touch pencil or brush except in full dress. He ruined himself by gambling and dissolute habits, and became lost as to all ambition for that art which had been so grand a mistress to him in the beginning. He finally arrived at that stage where he lost at the gaming-table and in riotous living what he earned by contract under one who managed his affairs, giving him a stipulated sum for just so much daily work in his studio. Such was the famous author of that splendid example of art, the "Martyrdom of Saint Peter," in the Vatican. Parmigiano, the eminent painter, was full of the wildness of genius. He became mad after the philosopher's stone, jilting art as a mistress, though his eager creditors forced him to set once more to work, though to little effect.
Great painters, like great writers, have had their peculiar modes of producing their effects. Thus Domenichino was accustomed to assume and enact before the canvas the passion and character he intended to depict with the brush. While engaged upon the "Martyrdom of Saint Andrew," Caracci, a brother painter, came into his studio and found him in a violent passion. When this fit of abstraction had passed, Caracci embraced him, admitting that Domenichino had proved himself his master, and that he had learned from him the true manner of expressing sentiment or passion upon the canvas.
Richard Wilson, the eminent English landscape-painter, strove in vain, he said, to paint the motes dancing in the sunshine. A friend coming into his studio found the artist sitting dejected on the floor, looking at his last work. The new-comer examined the canvas and remarked critically that it looked like a broad landscape just after a shower. Wilson started to his feet in delight, saying, "That is the effect I intended to represent, but thought I had failed." Poor Wilson possessed undoubted genius, but neglected his art for brandy, and was himself neglected in turn. He was one of the original members of the Royal Academy.
Undoubtedly, genius is at times nonplussed and at fault, like plain humanity, and is helped out of a temporary dilemma by accident,—as when Poussin the painter, having lost all patience in his fruitless attempts to produce a certain result with the brush, impatiently dashed his sponge against the canvas and brought out thereby the precise effect desired; namely, the foam on a horse's mouth.
Washington Allston[77] is recalled to us in this connection, one of the most eminent of our American painters, and a poet of no ordinary pretensions. "The Sylphs of the Seasons and other Poems" was published in 1813. He was remarkable for his graphic and animated conversational powers, and was the warm personal friend of Coleridge and Washington Irving. Irving says, "His memory I hold in reverence and affection as one of the purest, noblest, and most intellectual beings that ever honored me with his friendship." While living in London he was elected associate of the Royal Academy. Bostonians are familiar with Allston's half-finished picture of "Belshazzar's Feast," upon which he was engaged when death snatched him from his work.
CHAPTER IV.
It has been said that the first three men in the world were a gardener, a ploughman, and a grazier; while all political economists admit that the real wealth and stamina of a nation must be looked for among the cultivators of the soil. Was it not Swift who declared that the man who could make two ears of corn or two blades of grass grow upon a spot of ground where only one grew before, deserved better of mankind than the whole race of politicians? Bacon, Cowley, Sir William Temple, Buffon, and Addison were all attached to horticulture, and more or less time was devoted by them to the cultivation of trees and plants of various sorts; nor did they fail to record the refined delight and the profit they derived therefrom. Daniel Webster was an enthusiastic agriculturist; so were Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Walter Scott, Horace Greeley, Gladstone, Evarts,[78] Wilder, Loring, Poore, and a host of other contemporaneous and noted men. "They who labor in the earth," said Jefferson, "are the chosen people of God."