iness under this severe regimen, but
they were much improved in fancy and delicacy; the episode of Musidora,
"the solemnly ridiculous bathing scene," as Campbell terms it, was
almost entirely rewritten. Johnson and Gibbon were the least laborious
in arranging their _copy_ for the press. Gibbon sent the first and only
MS. of his stupendous work (the _Decline and Fall_) to his printer; and
Johnson's high-sounding sentences were written almost without an effort.
Both, however, lived and moved, as it were, in the world of letters,
thinking or caring of little else--one in the heart of busy London,
which he dearly loved, and the other in his silent retreat at Lausanne.
Dryden wrote hurriedly, to provide for the day; but his _Absalom and
Achitophel_, and the beautiful imagery of the _Hind and Panther_, must
have been fostered with parental care. St. Pierre copied his _Paul and
Virginia_ nine times, that he might render it the more perfect. Rousseau
was a very coxcomb in these matters: the amatory epistles, in his new
_Heloise_, he wrote on fine gilt-edged card-paper, and having folded,
addressed, and sealed them, he opened and read them in the solitary
woods of Clairens, with the mingled enthusiasm of an author and lover.
Sheridan watched long and anxiously for bright thoughts, as the MS. of
his _School for Scandal_, in its various stages, proves. Burns composed
in the open air, the sunnier the better; but he laboured hard, and with
almost unerring taste and judgment, in correcting.[10]

Lord Byron was a rapid composer, but made abundant use of the
pruning-knife. On returning one of his proof sheets from Italy, he
expressed himself undecided about a single word, for which he wished to
substitute another, and requested Mr. Murray to refer it to Mr. Gifford,
then editor of the _Quarterly Review_. Sir Walter Scott evinced his love
of literary labour by undertaking the revision of the whole of the
_Waverley_ Novels--a goodly freightage of some fifty or sixty volumes.
The works of Wordsworth, Southey, Coleridge, and Moore, and the occasional
variations in their different editions, mark their love of the touching.
Southey was, indeed, unwearied after his kind--a true author of the old
school. The bright thoughts of Campbell, which sparkle like polished
lances, were manufactured with almost equal care; he was the Pope of our
contemporary authors.[11] Allan Cunningham corrected but little, yet his
imitations of the elder lyrics are pe