abstracting himself from all outward concerns; that no one knew better
how to be alone, though surrounded by others; and that, in fact, his
senses took no note of outward things. When Cumberland was composing any
work, he never shut himself up in his study, but always wrote in the
room where his family sat, and did not feel in the least disturbed by
the noise of his children at play beside him. The literary habits of
Lord Hailes, as Mr. Robert Chambers remarks, were hardly such as would
have been expected from his extreme nicety of diction: it was in no
secluded sanctum, or "den," that he composed, but by the "parlour
fireside," with wife and bairns within very present sight and sound.

Cowper describes himself at Weston (1791) as working in a study exposed
to all manner of inroads, and in no way disconcerted by the coming and
going of servants, or other incidental and inevitable impediments. A
year or two later he writes from the same spot, "amidst a chaos of
interruptions," including Hayley spouting Greek, and Mrs. Unwin talking
sometimes to them, sometimes to herself. Francis Horner relates a visit
he and a friend paid to Jeremy Bentham at Ford Abbey, one spacious room
in which, a tapestried chamber, the utilitarian philosopher had utilized
for what he called his "scribbling shop"--two or three tables being set
out, covered with white napkins, on which were placed music desks with
manuscripts; and here the visitors were allowed to be "present at the
mysteries, for he went on as if we had not been with him."

The fourth of Dr. Chalmers' Astronomical Discourses was penned in a
small pocket-book, in a strange apartment, where he was liable every
moment to interruption; for it was at the manse of Balmerino,
disappointed in not finding the minister at home, and having a couple of
hours to spare,--and in a drawing-room at the manse of Kilmany, with all
the excitement of meeting for the first time, after a year's absence,
many of his former friends and parishioners,--that he penned paragraph
after paragraph of a composition which, as his son-in-law and
biographer, Dr. Hanna, says, bears upon it so much the aspect of high
and continuous elaboration.

His friend,--and sometimes associate in pastoral work,--Edward Irving,
on the other hand, could not write a sermon if any one was in the room
with him. Chalmers appears to have been specially endowed with that
faculty of concentrated attention which is commonly regarded as one