“No doubt Shelley’s bad health in the autumn of 1817,” writes one of his biographers, “was partly caused by overwork, for in that year he had written as much poetry as would take ten years in the life of a less impetuous writer.”
All his life Shelley spent in piling up knowledge from forbidden mines of lore. With more energy than any other poet Shelley performed the Herculean labors of greatness, and so swiftly was it done that the world has fallen into the error of considering him as a bird who sang inevitable songs.
In these two cases I have shown what seems to me to be powerful evidence of the fact that, although artists are born, geniuses are made. I have shown the methods of greatness as applied to the lives of two great men. Actually, perhaps, I have been talking about the artistry of the artist.
Let us turn for a moment to evidence of this same method of industry as applied to an individual work, more strictly, perhaps, the artistry of art.
“Love in the Valley” is unquestionably one of the great lyrics of English literature. As unquestionably, I think, in its first published form, it was a very mediocre, if not an utterly bad poem. Let me quote you the first verse as it stood in the early edition:
“Under yonder beech-tree standing on the greensward,
Crouch’d with her arms behind her little head,
Her knees folded up, and her tresses on her bosom,
Lies my young love sleeping in the shade.