lied, "No, my dear; only an idea."

George Bancroft, the historian, had a similar habit. His bedroom served
also as a library. The room was spacious, and its walls were lined,
above and below, with volumes. A single bed stood in the middle of the
apartment, and beside the bed were paper, pencil, two wax candles, and
matches; so that, like Mr. Pecksniff, Mr. Bancroft might not forget any
idea that came into his mind in a wakeful moment of the night.

As curious a mode of composition as perhaps any on record, if the story
be credible, is that affirmed of Fuller--that he used to write the first
words of every line near the margin down to the foot of the paper, and
that then, beginning again, he filled up the blanks exactly, without
spaces, interlineations, or contractions, and that he would so connect
the ends and beginnings that the sense would appear as complete as if it
had been written in a continued series after the ordinary manner.

Several distinguished American writers have the habit of jotting a
sentence, or a line or two here and there, upon a long page, and then
filling up the outline thus made with persistent revision.

With some great writers, it has been customary to do a vast amount of
antecedent work before beginning their books. It is related of George
Eliot that she read one thousand books before she wrote "Daniel
Deronda." For two or three years before she composed a work, she read up
her subject in scores and scores of volumes. She was one of the masters,
so called, of all learning, talking with scholars and men of science on
terms of equality. George Eliot was a hard worker, and, like many gifted
writers, she was often tempted to burn at night the lines she had
written during the day. Carlyle was similarly tempted, and it is to be
regretted that the great growler, in many instances, did not carry out
the design. Carlyle spent fifteen years on his "Frederick the Great."
Alison perused two thousand books before he completed his celebrated
history. It is said of another that he read twenty thousand volumes and
wrote only two books. "For the statistics of the negro population of
South America alone," says Robert Dale Owen, "I examined more than 150
volumes." David Livingstone said: "Those who have never carried a book
through the press can form no idea of the amount of toil it involves.
The process has increased my respect for authors a thousandfold. I think
I would rather cross the African continent aga