name that title bore
punning and complimentary reference, his sterling friend and ally, Sir
Thomas More.

Aubrey relates how Hobbes composed his "Leviathan": "He walked much and
mused as he walked; and he had in the head of his cane a pen and
inkhorn, and he carried always a note-book in his pocket, and 'as soon
as the thought darted,' he presently entered it into his book, or
otherwise might have lost it. He had drawn the design of the book into
chapters, etc., and he knew whereabouts it would come in." Hartley
Coleridge somewhere expresses his entire conviction that it was Pope's
general practice to set down in a book every line, half-line, or lucky
phrase that occurred to him, and either to find or make a place for
them when and where he could. Richard Savage noted down a whole tragedy
on scraps of paper at the counters of shops, into which he entered and
asked for pen and ink as if to make a memorandum.

"A man would do well to carry a pencil in his pocket, and write down the
thoughts of the moment. Those that come unsought are generally the most
valuable, and should be secured, because they seldom return." This was
the advice of Lord Bacon, whose example has been followed by many
eminent men. Miss Martineau has recorded that Barry Cornwall's favorite
method of composition was practised when alone in a crowd. He, like
Savage, also had a habit of running into a shop to write down his
verses. Tom Moore's custom was to compose as he walked. He had a table
in his garden, on which he wrote down his thoughts. When the weather was
bad, he paced up and down his small study. It is extremely desirable
that thoughts should be written as they rise in the mind, because, if
they are not recorded at the time, they may never return. "I attach so
much importance to the ideas which come during the night, or in the
morning," says Gaston Plante, the electrical engineer, "that I have
always, at the head of my bed, paper and pencil suspended by a string,
by the help of which I write every morning the ideas I have been able
to conceive, particularly upon subjects of scientific research. I write
these notes in obscurity, and decipher and develop them in the morning,
pen in hand." The philosopher Emerson took similar pains to catch a
fleeting thought, for, whenever he had a happy idea, he wrote it down,
and when Mrs. Emerson, startled in the night by some unusual sound,
cried, "What is the matter? Are you ill?" the philosopher softly
rep