Eccentricities in Composition.

II. Care in Literary Production.

III. Speed in Writing.

IV. Influence upon Writers of Time and Place.

V. Writing under Difficulties.

VI. Aids to Inspiration--Favorite Habits of Work.

VII. Goethe, Dickens, Schiller, and Scott.

VIII. Burning Midnight Oil.

IX. Literary Partnership.

X. Anonymity in Authorship.

XI. System in Novel Writing.

XII. Traits of Musical Composers.

XIII. The Hygiene of Writing.

XIV. A Humorist's Regimen.

METHODS OF AUTHORS.

I.

Eccentricities in Composition.

The public--that is, the reading world made up of those who love the
products of authorship--always takes an interest in the methods of work
adopted by literary men, and is fond of gaining information about
authorship in the act, and of getting a glimpse of its favorite, the
author, at work in that "sanctum sanctorum"--the study. The modes in
which men write are so various that it would take at least a dozen
volumes to relate them, were they all known, for:--

"Some wits are only in the mind
When beaux and belles are 'round them prating;
Some, when they dress for dinner, find
Their muse and valet both in waiting;
And manage, at the self-same time,
To adjust a neckcloth and a rhyme.

"Some bards there are who cannot scribble
Without a glove to tear or nibble;
Or a small twig to whisk about--
As if the hidden founts of fancy,
Like wells of old, were thus found out
By mystic tricks of rhabdomancy.

"Such was the little feathery wand,
That, held forever in the hand
Of her who won and wore the crown
Of female genius in this age,
Seemed the conductor that drew down
Those words of lightning to her page."

This refers to Madame de Stael, who, when writing, wielded a "little
feathery wand," made of paper, shaped like a fan or feather, in the
manner and to the effect above described.

Well may the vivacious penman of "Rhymes on the Road" exclaim:--

"What various attitudes, and ways,
And tricks we authors have in writing!
While some write sitting, some, like Bayes,
Usually stand while they're inditing.
Poets there are who wear the floor out,
Measuring a line at every stride;
While some, like Henry Stephens, pour out
Rhymes by the dozen while they ride.
Herodotus w