lly performed before
noon. He said the happiest hours of his life were those passed
in the composition of his different books. He wrote most of
"The Stout Gentleman" while mounted on a stile, or seated on
a stone, in his excursions with Leslie, the painter, 'round
about Stratford-on-Avon,--the latter making sketches in the
mean time. The artist says that his companion wrote with the
greatest rapidity, often laughing to himself, and from time to
time reading the manuscript aloud.

Dr. Darwin wrote most of his works on scraps of paper with a pencil as
he travelled. But how did he travel? In a worn and battered "sulky,"
which had a skylight at the top, with an awning to be drawn over it at
pleasure; the front of the carriage being occupied by a receptacle for
writing-paper and pencils, a knife, fork, and spoon; while on one side
was a pile of books reaching from the floor nearly to the front window
of the carriage; on the other, by Mrs. Schimmel-penninck's account, a
hamper containing fruit and sweetmeats, cream and sugar,--to which the
big, burly, keen-eyed, stammering doctor paid attentions as devoted as
he ever bestowed on the pile of books.

Alexander Kisfaludy, foremost Hungarian poet of his time, wrote most of
his "Himfy" on horseback or in solitary walks; a poem, or collection of
poems, that made an unprecedented sensation in Hungary, where, by the
same token, Sandor Kisfaludy of that ilk became at once the Great
Unknown.

Cujas, the object of Chateaubriand's special admiration, used to write
lying flat on his breast, with his books spread about him.

Sir Henry Wotton is our authority for recording of Father Paul Sarpi
that, when engaged in writing, his manner was to sit fenced with a
castle of paper about his chair, and overhead; "for he was of our Lord
of St. Albans' opinion, that 'all air is predatory' and especially
hurtful when the spirits are most employed."

Rousseau tells us that he never could compose pen in hand, seated
at a table, and duly supplied with paper and ink; it was in his
promenades,--the _promenades d'un solitaire_,--amid rocks and woods,
and at night, in bed, when he was lying awake, that he wrote in his
brain; to use his own phrase, "_J'ecris dans mon cerveau_." Some of
his periods he turned and re-turned half a dozen nights in bed before
he deemed them fit to be put down on paper. On moving to the Hermitage
of Montmorency, he adopted the same plan as in Paris,--devoting, as
always, hi