Dr. Edward Robinson was always under the necessity of waiting upon his moods in composition. He wondered at the men who can write when they will. Sometimes for days together he could make no headway in his higher tasks.
There are avocations, like those of the advocate, the preacher, the journalist, which must be pursued continuously, well or ill, and in spite of such variations of feeling. In these labors men doubtless learn to disregard in some degree these moods of mind; but the variable quality of the productions of one man on different days confirms what testimony we have of their existence.
The zeal or the indifference, the clearness or the dulness, the quickness or the sluggishness of thought, are doubtless to some degree determined by the methods of labor into which the person falls, and by the incidental habits and circumstances of his life. It is wonderful what a vast fund of information and suggestion upon these and kindred points of mental phenomena is found in the experience of the great industrial class of the intellectual world recorded in biographical and historical literature. Let us then visit some of the busiest and most successful scholars, philosophers, poets, writers, and preachers; let us peep through the window of biography into the library, the cabinet, and the office. Let us watch the habits of some of these busy-brained men, these great masters of the intellectual world. Let us note what helps and what hindrances they have found; how they have driven their work, or how they have been driven by it, and what is the nature and degree of the systems which they have adopted in ordering their hours of labor and of relaxation.
We will visit them as we find them, without looking for examples of excellence or warnings of carelessness, and will leave the reader to make his own inferences.
The poet Southey, who is said to have been, perhaps, more continually employed than any other writer of his generation, was habitually an early riser, but he never encroached upon the hours of the night. He gives the following account of his day, as he employed it at the age of thirty-two: "Three pages of history after breakfast (equivalent to five in small quarto printing), then to transcribe and copy for the press, or to make my selections and biographies, or what else suits my humor, till dinner-time. From dinner till tea, I write letters, read, see the newspaper, and very often indulge in a siesta, for sleep agrees with me, and I have a good substantial theory to prove that it must; for as a man who walks much requires to sit down and rest himself, so does the brain, if it be the part most worked, require its repose. Well, after tea I go to poetry, and correct and rewrite and copy till I am tired, and then turn to anything else till supper." At the age of fifty-five, his life varied but little from this sketch. When it is said that his breakfast was at nine, after a little reading, his dinner at four, tea at six, and supper at half past nine, and that the intervals, except the time regularly devoted to a walk, between two and four, and a short sleep before tea, were occupied with reading and writing, the outline of his day during those long seasons when he was in full work will have been given. After supper, when the business of the day seemed to be over, though he generally took a book, he remained with his family, and was ready to enter into conversation, to amuse and to be amused. During the several years that he was partially employed upon the life of Dr. Bell, he devoted two hours before breakfast to it in the summer, and as much time as there was daylight for during the winter months, that it might not interfere with the usual occupations of the day. Of himself, at the age of sixty, at a time when he was thus engaged every morning at work away from his home, he says: "I get out of bed as the clock strikes six, and shut the house door after me as it strikes seven. After two hours' work, home to breakfast; after which my son engages me till about half past ten, and, when the post brings no letters that interest or trouble me, by eleven I have done with the newspaper, and can then set about what is properly the business of the day. But I am liable to frequent interruptions, so that there are not many mornings in which I can command from two to three unbroken hours at the desk. At two I take my daily walk, be the weather what it may, and when the weather permits, with a book in my hand. Dinner at four, read about half an hour, then take to the sofa with a different book, and after a few pages get my soundest sleep, till summoned to tea at six. My best time during the winter is by candlelight; twilight interferes with it a little, and in the season of company I can never count upon an evening's work. Supper at half past nine, after which I read an hour, and then to bed. The greatest part of my miscellaneous work is done in the odds and ends of time."
Shelley rose early in the morning, walked and read before breakfast, took that meal sparingly, wrote and studied the greater part of the morning, walked and read again, dined on vegetables (for he took neither meat nor wine), conversed with his friends (to whom his house was ever open), again walked out, and usually finished with reading to his wife till ten o'clock, when he went to bed. This was his daily existence. His book was generally Plato, or Homer, or one of the Greek tragedians, or the Bible, in which last he took a great interest. Out of twenty-four hours he frequently read sixteen. "He wrote his Prometheus," says Willis, "in the baths of Caracalla, near the Coliseum." It was his favorite haunt in Rome.
The poet Campbell thus describes his labors, when in London, at the age of fifty-five: "I get up at seven, write letters for the Polish Association, until half past nine, breakfast, go to the club and read the newspapers till twelve. Then I sit down to my studies, and, with many interruptions, do what I can till four. I then walk round the Park and generally dine out at six. Between nine and ten I return to chambers, read a book or write a letter, and go to bed always before twelve." "His correspondence," says his biographer, "occupied four hours every morning, in French, German, and Latin. He could seldom act with the moderation necessary for his health. Whatever object he once took in hand, he determined to carry out, and found no rest until it was accomplished." Whatever he wrote during his connection with the New Monthly and the Metropolitan was written hurriedly. If a subject was proposed for the end of a month, he seldom gave it a thought until it was no longer possible to delay the task. He would then sit down in the quietest corner of his chambers, or, if quiet was not to be found in town, he would start off to the country, and there, shut in among the green fields, complete his task. When sixty-two years old, he says: "I am only six hours out of the twenty-four in bed. I study twelve, and walk six. Oranges, exercise, and early rising serve to keep me flourishing."
"Procter (Barry Cornwall) usually writes," says Willis, "in a small closet adjoining his library. There is just room enough in it for a desk and two chairs, and his favorite books, miniature likenesses of authors, manuscripts, &c., piled around in true poetical confusion." He confines his labors to the daytime, eschewing evening work. In a letter to a friend, some years ago, he wrote: "I hope you will not continue to give up your nights to literary undertakings. Believe me (who have suffered bitterly for this imprudence) that nothing in the world of letters is worth the sacrifice of health and strength and animal spirits which will certainly follow this excess of labor."
Cowper, at the age of fifty-three, and at a busy period of his life, says: "The morning is my writing time, and in the morning I have no spirits. So much the worse for my correspondents. Sleep, that refreshes my body, seems to cripple me in every other respect. As the evening approaches I grow more alert, and when I am retiring to bed am more fit for mental occupation than at any other time. So it fares with us whom they call nervous."
He was very assiduous in labor. While he was translating Homer, he says: "As soon as breakfast is over, I retire to my nutshell of a summer-house, which is my verse manufactory, and here I abide seldom less than three hours, and not often more." This little summer-house, which he called his boudoir, was not much bigger than a sedan-chair; the door of it opened into the garden, which was covered with pinks, roses, and honeysuckles. The window opened into his neighbor's orchard. He says: "It formerly served an apothecary, now dead, as a smoking-room; and under my feet is a trapdoor, which once covered a hole in the ground where he kept his bottles. At present, however, it is dedicated to sublimer uses. Having lined it with garden mats, and furnished it with a table and two chairs, here I write all that I write in summer-time, whether to my friends or to the public.... In the afternoon I return to it again, and all the daylight that follows, except what is sometimes devoted to a walk, is given to Homer." In the evening he devoted himself to transcribing, so that his mornings and evenings were, for the most part, completely engaged. He read also, but less than he wrote; "for I must have bodily exercise," he said, "and therefore never let a day pass without it." His walk was usually in the afternoon.