instinct to pour out the treasure of his mind," took care to
add the warning that no one must think he "can leap forth suddenly a poet
by dreaming he hath been in Parnassus." Poe has uttered a comparable
warning against an excessive belief in the theory of the plenary
inspiration of poets in his _Marginalia_, where he declares that "this
untenable and paradoxical idea of the incompatibility of genius and _art_"
must be "kick[ed] out of the world's way." Wordsworth's saying that poetry
has its origin in "emotion recollected in tranquillity" also suggests that
the inspiration of poetry is an inspiration that may be recaptured by
contemplation and labour. How eagerly one would study a Shakespeare
manuscript, were it unearthed, in which one could see the shaping
imagination of the poet at work upon his lines! Many people have the
theory--it is supported by an assertion of Jonson's--that Shakespeare
wrote with a current pen, heedless of blots and little changes. He was, it
is evident, not one of the correct authors. But it seems unlikely that no
pains of rewriting went to the making of the speeches in _A Midsummer
Night's Dream_ or Hamlet's address to the skull. Shakespeare, one feels,
is richer than any other author in the beauty of first thoughts. But one
seems to perceive in much of his work the beauty of second thoughts too.
There have been few great writers who have been so incapable of revision
as Robert Browning, but Browning with all his genius is not a great
stylist to be named with Shakespeare. He did indeed prove himself to be a
great stylist in more than one poem, such as _Childe Roland_--which he
wrote almost at a sitting. His inspiration, however, seldom raised his
work to the same beauty of perfection. He is, as regards mere style, the
most imperfect of the great poets. If only Tennyson had had his genius! If
only Browning had had Tennyson's desire for golden words!

It would be absurd, however, to suggest that the main labour of an author
consists in rewriting. The choice of words may have been made before a
single one of them has been written down, as tradition tells us was the
case with Menander, who described one of his plays as "finished" before he
had written a word of it. It would be foolish, too, to write as though
perfection of form in literature were merely a matter of picking and
choosing among decorative words. Style is a method, not of decoration, but
of expression. It is an attempt to make the bea