Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 | Page 3

grace or flow of style can come from
writing rapidly. Haste can make you slipshod, but it can never make
you graceful. With what dismay one reads of the wonderful fellows in
fashionable novels, who can easily dash off a brilliant essay in a single
night! When I think how slowly my poor thoughts come in, how tardily
they connect themselves, what a delicious prolonged perplexity it is to
cut and contrive a decent clothing of words for them, as a little girl
does for her doll,--nay, how many new outfits a single sentence
sometimes costs before it is presentable, till it seems at last, like our
army on the Potomac, as if it never could be thoroughly clothed,--I
certainly should never dare to venture into print, but for the confirmed
suspicion that the greatest writers have done even so. I can hardly
believe that there is any autograph in the world so precious or
instructive as that scrap of paper, still preserved at Ferrara, on which
Ariosto wrote in sixteen different revisions one of his most famous
stanzas. Do you know, my dear neophyte, how Balzac used to compose?
As a specimen of the labor that sometimes goes to make an effective
style, the process is worth recording. When Balzac had a new work in
view, he first spent weeks in studying from real life for it, haunting the
streets of Paris by day and night, note-book in hand. His materials
gained, he shut himself up till the book was written, perhaps two
months, absolutely excluding everybody but his publisher. He emerged
pale and thin, with the complete manuscript in his hand,--not only
written, but almost rewritten, so thoroughly was the original copy

altered, interlined, and rearranged. This strange production, almost
illegible, was sent to the unfortunate printers; with infinite difficulty a
proof-sheet was obtained, which, being sent to the author, was
presently returned in almost as hopeless a chaos of corrections as the
manuscript first submitted. Whole sentences were erased, others
transposed, everything modified. A second and a third followed, alike
torn to pieces by the ravenous pen of Balzac. The despairing printers
labored by turns, only the picked men of the office being equal to the
task, and they relieving each other at hourly intervals, as beyond that
time no one could endure the fatigue. At last, by the fourth proof-sheet,
the author too was wearied out, though not contented. "I work ten hours
out of the twenty-four," said he, "over the elaboration of my unhappy
style, and I am never satisfied, myself, when all is done."
Do not complain that this scrupulousness is probably wasted, after all,
and that nobody knows. The public knows. People criticize higher than
they attain. When the Athenian audience hissed a public speaker for a
mispronunciation, it did not follow that any one of the malcontents
could pronounce as well as the orator. In our own lyceum-audiences
there may not be a man who does not yield to his own private
eccentricities of dialect, but see if they do not appreciate elegant
English from Phillips or Everett! Men talk of writing down to the
public taste who have never yet written up to that standard. "There
never yet was a good tongue," said old Fuller, "that wanted ears to hear
it." If one were expecting to be judged by a few scholars only, one
might hope somehow to cajole them; but it is this vast, unimpassioned,
unconscious tribunal, this average judgment of intelligent minds, which
is truly formidable,--something more undying than senates and more
omnipotent than courts, something which rapidly cancels all transitory
reputations, and at last becomes the organ of eternal justice and
infallibly awards posthumous fame.
The first demand made by the public upon every composition is, of
course, that it should be attractive. In addressing a miscellaneous
audience, whether through eye or ear, it is certain that no man living
has a right to be tedious. Every editor is therefore compelled to insist
that his contributors should make themselves agreeable, whatever else
they may do. To be agreeable, it is not necessary to be amusing; an
essay may be thoroughly delightful without a single witticism, while a

monotone of jokes soon grows tedious. Charge your style with life, and
the public will not ask for conundrums. But the profounder your
discourse, the greater must necessarily be the effort to refresh and
diversify. I have observed, in addressing audiences of children in
schools and elsewhere, that there is no fact so grave, no thought so
abstract, but you can make it very interesting to the small people, if you
will only put in plenty of detail and illustration; and I have not
observed that in this respect grown men are so very different. If,
therefore, in writing, you find it your