to bookkeeping, did not
grow into an artist in any large sense; and Zola, with the motto "Nulle
dies sine linea" ever facing him on his desk, made himself a prodigious
author, indeed, but never more than a second-rate writer. On the other
hand, Trollope without industry would have been nobody at all, and Zola
without pains might as well have been a waiter. Nor is it only the little
or the clumsy artists who have found inspiration in labour. It is a pity
we have not first drafts of all the great poems in the world: we might
then see how much of the magic of literature is the result of toil and how
much of the unprophesied wind of inspiration. Sir Sidney Colvin recently
published an early draft of Keats's sonnet, "Bright star, would I were
stedfast as thou art," which showed that in the case of Keats at least the
mind in creation was not "as a fading coal," but as a coal blown to
increasing flame and splendour by sheer "labour and study." And the poetry
of Keats is full of examples of the inspiration not of first but of second
and later thoughts. Henry Stephens, a medical student who lived with him
for time, declared that an early draft of _Endymion_ opened with the line:

A thing of beauty is a constant joy

--a line which, Stephens observed on hearing it, was "a fine line, but
wanting something." Keats thought over it for a little, then cried out, "I
have it," and wrote in its place:

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever.

Nor is this an exceptional example of the studied miracles of Keats. The
most famous and, worn and cheapened by quotation though it is, the most
beautiful of all his phrases--

magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn--

did not reach its perfect shape without hesitation and thinking. He
originally wrote "the wide casements" and "keelless seas":

the wide casements, opening on the foam
Of keelless seas, in fairy lands forlorn.

That would probably have seemed beautiful if the perfect version had not
spoiled it for us. But does not the final version go to prove that
Shelley's assertion that "when composition begins, inspiration is already
on the decline" does not hold good for all poets? On the contrary, it is
often the heat of labour which produces the heat of inspiration. Or rather
it is often the heat of labour which enables the writer to recall the heat
of inspiration. Ben Jonson, who held justly that "the poet must be able by
nature and