The talk about inspiration and waiting for it is confined to producers of the first class, and producers of the lowest class. It will not be denied, one may presume, that Milton's vein was fullest and freshest at the "vernal and autumnal equinox," nor will very many more authentic stories of a similar quality be questioned. If writers who have had to write for bread, and have besides written work that will live, have also talked about times of inspiration, this has applied to their best work, the work that will live. But "the literary world," as it is called, is full of mere literary adventurers-clever fellows who have no literary vocation but that of cleverness, and no care for literature except as an arena for cleverness, in which a certain amount of money, with a good deal of admiration and some agreeable social excitement, is to be had. These men are of all grades, from the higher type, sketched in Harriet Martineau's Autobiography to types much lower; and they do undoubtedly talk much nonsense about inspiration and waiting for inspiration. There is much less of this sort of thing than there used to be. These are not the days (to quote roughly a brilliant littérateur now dead) in which Mr. Pitt would be spoken of as taking an emetic behind the Speaker's chair, before he could reply to Mr. Burke-they are days in which a glass of wine too much may spoil a week's work. Still, this type is to be found, all alive, in the circles of working literary men. It is not a very uncommon thing for writers of this stamp to "work in couples"-that is their phrase. They cannot get on till they have met and talked things over. Then they go to some favourite haunt of the Muses and the Whiskeys, and sharpen each other's wits, throwing off slips of copy at intervals. In this way, or in ways quite as ignoble, and amid the fumes of tobacco and strong drink-we do not speak of what is usually known as excess-in this way is produced a good deal of review and leading-article literature. But the thing-and the whole kind of thing-is much less common than it used to be in the days of Warrington and Pendennis. Work produced in the Warrington-Pendennis fashion may be "brilliant" and "effective,"-though even in that respect the standards have altered; but it cannot be trustworthy or really useful, nor can it live.

Waiting for inspiration, however, is one thing; the obstructions to literary work are another. Let us glance at some of these.

First, illness of different kinds. "Lines composed by the Emperor Hadrian, on his death-bed, Animula vagula, &c.; Verses written by Thomas Hood in the near prospect of death- Farewell, life! my senses swim'"-and a score of such commonplaces, including a hundred anecdotes of consumptive men and women of genius. These are very instructive to those who know how to read them, but when they come, corrupted by a string of penny-a-liners, to the ears of Bungay, they are misleading to him and bad indeed for his people. Off goes Bungay to Warrington, who has migraine and no worse. "Now, just look here," says Bungay, "if Hood could write this poem when he was dying, why can't you do my prospectus when you're only queer? You don't look a bit like dying."

"In the first place," says Warrington, "I don't know that Hood was near dying when he wrote those verses. In the second place, a man may be in much better condition an hour before death than after a hard day's work, and a bad night's sleep; and in the third place (subauditur) you're a fool, Bungay."

When the late C. H. Bennett was a mass of rheumatic cramps from his toes to his fingers' ends, we may presume that nobody expected him to draw for Punchthough perhaps Bungay or Bacon might, after all, have suggested his "doing it all with his mouth," like Miss Biffin. Nor would even Bungay or Bacon expect a poem or an essay from a man in an apoplectic fit. But any writing man who has had to do with Bungay and Bacon must have seen how very muddled their minds are in these matters. They have not the least idea that poor Heine, forced to lift his eyelid with one hand while he wrote with the other, or Leopardi, his fellow-sufferer, or Hoffmann in his last hours, free from pain and struggling to dictate to his wife, might be in a far better position for work than Warrington with only migraine, or Walter Scott after only five hours' rest. But these things are not only so; they are

perfectly natural and intelligible. It is on record that Sir Walter Scott could not work with his pen at all unless he had had eight hours' sleep. What would Bungay have said to this? He would have said to Warrington, "Don't tell me, sir. You were at the Back Kitchen, with Costigan, last night." And he would be excusable. A blister, or a pot of leeches, or a fit of ague, is something to show, but the grey matter of the brain is not visible during life; nor has any physiologist even ventured on a guess why four hours' sleep should be enough to renew the grey matter in the brain of Napoleon, while eight hours were absolutely necessary in the case of Sir Walter Scott. But we all know that Sir Walter broke down under the attempt to force his brain, sleep or no sleep.

Still less would Bungay understand-nor in truth is it easy to explain-the difference between some kinds of brain work and others in relation to illness or weakness. The present writer has had large experience of what is well known to be severe labour,-that of the reporter, and has never found himself exhausted by working week after week for eighteen hours a day. The reason is, mainly, that in such work, as in that of ordinary business, the mind gets all the enormous help derivable from the laws of association. Link follows link, and the process goes upon an inclined plane to its goal. Nobody who reads the lives of literary workers can fail to be struck with the all but unanimous testimony that more than three hours a day at the work of literary production is destructive. These three hours apply strictly to the time for which the pen is in hand; they have nothing to do with reading or other preparation. The testimony on this point, from quarters the most decisive, is of the most curious unanimity. Some say two hours, some say four, a very few say five or six, with breaks; but the average is three; from Bulwer-Lytton to Channing, from journalist to poet; and, for even this much of production, the work must be pretty homogeneous and not against the grain. Harriet Martineau had to sit long at the desk, because she was mechanically slow with her pen. When we read that literary producers of any power have gone on working up to the last, even in the near approach of death, we usually find the work done has been of a not unwelcome kind, and often that it has formed part of a long-cherished design. But when the disease of which the sufferer is dying is consumption, or some disease which between paroxysms of pain leaves spaces of ease and rest, it is nothing wonderful that work should be done. Some of the best of Paley's works were produced under such conditions, and some of the best of Shelley's. Nor, indeed, is there anything in mere pain which necessarily prevents literary work. The late Mr. T. T. Lynch produced some of his most beautiful writing amid spasms of angina pectoris. This required high moral courage in the writer, but Mr. Lynch could not have written a line, or thought one, if he had suffered from the complaint which, we have lately read, so much limits the activity of the Queen. Everybody who understands the subject must have read with much sympathy the statement that hot places or nervous irritation bring on in her Majesty symptoms resembling those of sea-sickness. Who that has seen it, or known it, can write or pronounce the dreadful word water-brash without a shudder? Now persons may suffer from periodical migraine, or water-brash, and live till eighty, medicine being utterly powerless to help them-in other words, they may have every month an attack of "seasickness" lasting for days. Would anybody ask a sea-sick man for an essay or a poem? Not even Bungay. He would be glad to be away from the darkened room of the patient lying and groaning in abject misery.

It is a curious, though well-known fact, however, that times of illness, when the eyes swim and the hand shakes, are oftentimes rich in suggestion. If the mind is naturally fertile-if there is "stuff" in it-the hours of illness are by no means wasted. It is then that the "dreaming power" which counts for so much in literary work often asserts itself most usefully.

In her Autobiography Harriet Martineau has a great deal to say about different methods of literary work, and her own personal experience of it. For example, she says that though her friends were always taxing her with overworking

herself, they were quite in the wrong, for her work was pleasure and health to her -she had never written anything that she did not feel impelled to write, and, fortunately for her, this suited the public just then, and paid both her and her publishers. She relates how she flinched, when the proposal came before her, from undertaking wider literary responsibilities, such as would "drive" her brain, as men have to drive theirs, and she records that all the physicians she had ever known had expressed the opinion that literary work,under the usual conditions, is the most exhausting of labour. If the worker has money,-or if, which is the same thing, he does not care how much he owes or whom he ruins, the case is different. But upon one point, we are glad to see she set her foot down firmly. Some one advised her to avoid strong wines, but suggested that a glass of hock would do her good when she was pressed. She steadfastly, and very wisely, refused to touch wine while at work. It may safely be affirmed that no purely conscientious writing was ever produced under stimulation from alcohol. Harriet Martineau was one of those workers who could not write a paragraph without asking herself, "Is that wholly true? Is it a good thing to say it? Shall I lead any one astray by it? Had I better soften it down, or keep it back? Is it as well said as I can say it ?" Writing like that of Wilson's "Noctes," or Hoffman's madder stories, may be produced under the influence of wine, but "stuff of the con.science," not.

There is one form of brain-work which it is particularly easy to keep up for a length of time, pen in hand or not-we mean the brain-work of the mathematician or logician. This requires calm and steady application, but it is easy and unexhausting, for the same reason that ordinary business is so, or that work of the reporter to which (as an illustration) we have referred. One thing follows another, link by link, till the chain is completed and the work comes to a pause. Mere attention, even when very active and accompanied by ratiocination, may be kept up almost for ever without fatigue. The peculiarly fatiguing effect of literary work of certain kinds would seem to result largely from two causes. First, it is accompanied (in the cases we are considering) with more or less play of feeling; and, secondly, the writer, like the painter, has to be incessantly busy with his processes of grouping. Every sentence is written with an eye on every other sentence; and the middle and the end have to be kept in a certain relation to the beginning. It may be added that the complications of religious opinion which so much embarrass all public utterance in our day impose a heavy tax upon all serious and honest writers who are not at work within decidedly sectarian lines and for decidedly sectarian purposes. The pressure in this respect upon conscientious publicists has increased enormously within the last four or five years.

The practice of sitting down to the desk and beginning somehow-presuming, of course, that the brain will work at all and the hand hold a pen pretty steadily-is a good one, within limits. It is scarcely necessary to prescribe this plan to the working littérateur, for he must be always at his desk, if he is to earn his living. But the plan is admirable for all defined, homogeneous work, which does not require the exercise of "the dreaming power," or very careful expression. If either of those, imaginative or emotional movement, or nicety of thought and language, be needed, the plan necessarily breaks down. Southey is a case in point, and living examples could easily be mentioned. We write this with two in our eye, both of them distinguished writers. One of them has produced, in this way, more wooden pages than all other living writers (of the same rank) put together; but fortunately the woodenness does little or no harmexcept (a weighty exception, though) in helping to let down standards. It is gall and wormwood to the struggling Mr. X., who would rather go without a fire or a dinner than issue what he thought to be an unworthy page, to find the great Mr. Q. so successful, though he issues a thousand, and knows it. In the case of the other writer who is in our mind, the result is more serious. His books are concerned with topics of the gravest order, and it would be easy enough to pick out the perfunctorily written pages-they are often so bad, though evidently laboured. It

is a clear duty for a man of letters to refrain, as far as possible, from dealing with topics of the kind we have just indicated, unless his faculties are in order. It is, of course, a mere truism to say that industry is better than idleness-that idleness which John Sterling, driven to it by illness, called a "heavy cross to bear;" but, as a rule, work of a certain order should never be attempted, unless the whole man is "in good form." In fact, no writing man who has Harriet Martineau's sense of the vocation of literature, will endanger his work by attempting it. As we have already said, the hours when good writing is not possible are very often the most productive for purposes not absolutely immediate; and forcing the finer faculties is the most ruinous of all work. As for the wooden and the perfunctory pages in certain books to which we have alluded, there is not one of them which any respectable magazine or newspaper would print.

Incidentally we may mention here the case of one of the most active and able journalists of our time; a man of real genius, who died not very long ago of overwork. Being unable, in a fit of illness, to do anything else, he got by heart dozens of pages of statistical figures,-returns of exports and imports, and matters of that sort. This he did partly to lighten the heavy curse of idleness, and save his mind from gnawing itself to madness, and partly with an eye to future

uses.

At the foot of the preface to the Gentleman's Magazine for 1760, Mr. Urban printed this doggefel:

"A DIALOGUE between Mr. URBAN and his Boy.
"Urban. Well, Boy-and what does the Gentleman say?
Boy. He says, Sir, as how that he dines out to-day.
Urban. And have you no Message, nor Parcel, nor Letter?
Boy. No, nothing at all, Sir, nor worser nor better.

Urban. Od so!-and he promis'd the Verses- . . take him
-But if he won't do 'em, I'm sure I can't make him-
This Night the last Sheet goes to Press, at the GATE-
We must publish on MONDAY-and MONDAY's full late.
What the Duce must we do?-No kind Congratulation
To me on my Labours-nor yet to the Nation!-
This Year, too, when Volume the Thirtieth's compleat,
And we've taken MONTREAL and FRANCE has no Fleet.
And I've been at such Pains, and sustain'd such Expences
T' explain the GAZETTES to the commonest Senses,
With MAPS that point out, e'en to Hovels and Sties,
Where Battles are fought, that make Stocks fall or rise.-
This Year-what Disaster!-This Year, of all Years,
When we all have been brim-full of Joy, and of TEARS,
To say nothing in Verse, of the Change in the State,
'Tis hard-very hard-'tis the worst of hard Fate--
It cannot be help'd-Of the Bard, 'tis in vain,
And the Want of his Verses, alas! to complain.

If they cannot be had, I must e'en do without 'em ;

Our Readers, thank Heaven, will ne'er think about 'em."

Those were surely happy times, when a difficulty could be turned aside in so easy a fashion. But the only way to make a clean sweep of all troubles of the sort, and to be absolutely independent of some of the harassing incidents of editorial and other literary work, is to have moral courage after the pattern of the American editor, who did not scruple to issue to the subscribers to his newspaper a sheet which contained, besides advertisements, only these words:-"The wife of our esteemed editor having, since our last issue, presented him with three boys at a birth, his emotions have prevented his supplying the usual leaders and other literary matter. He has caved. The prayers of subscribers are earnestly desired. NO CARDS."

E

ROMAN CATHOLIC IDEALS.

VERY sensitive reader of the able and very instructive article on "Social Methods of Roman Catholicism in England" must have felt himself in an atmosphere of thought altogether foreign to that which he is compelled to breathe in daily life, even if he is a Catholic. Whether the writer of the article would adopt Dr. Newman's language or not, one feels at once that such an atmosphere as here strikes strangely upon the senses is the native air of that "hatred of Liberalism" which the great English Catholic so heartily avowed in his "Apologia." In truth the ideals of modern Liberalism, orthodox Protestant, neo-Protestant, or Pantheistic, will not live in the same house with the ideals which we discern, while we read that article, to be as much cherished by the Church of the author as they ever were or could be. This is nothing new; far otherwise; it has been and must continue to be, a subject of anxious thought for Liberals: especially those who see in the later growths of the democratic ideal only bad auguries for the immediate future of ideals of another kind. There are signs of the times which might lead one to say, in the rough, that Roman Catholicism was playing, and going on to play, the card of democracy. Let us see how such ideals of hers as would then come prominently forward compare with those of Modern Liberalism or Virtuous Respectability. For this purpose we will be indebted to the writings of Dr. Newman, who certainly speaks with great plainness upon these matters. Indeed, there is a passage in which he puts the case that the faithful may rebuke him for letting so much out of the bag. But he boldly justifies himself by pleading that "the world" knows well enough already the difference between her standards and those of "the Church," and knows that the Church knows she knows-so that only harm can be done by pretending to ignore the truth.

Our extracts will be rather long, but their length will, we believe, be fully excused by their characteristic force, and their great value as topics of instruction.

Under the rule of the Modern Protestant ideals, there is, Dr. Newman thinks, no such thing as Humility. The place of that "grace" is filled by "Modesty:"

"Pride under such training, instead of running to waste in the education of the mind, is turned to account; it gets a new name; it is called self-respect, and ceases to be the disagreeable, uncompanionable quality which it is in itself. Though it be the motive principle of the soul, it seldom comes to view; and when it shows itself, then delicacy and gentleness are its attire, and good sense and sense of honour direct its motions. It is no longer a restless agent without definite aim; it has a large field of exertion assigned to it, and it subserves those social interests which it would naturally trouble. It is directed into the channel of industry, frugality, honesty, and obedience; and it becomes the very staple of the religion and morality held in honour in a day like our own. It becomes the safeguard of chastity, the guarantee of veracity, in high and low; it is the very household god of society, as at present constituted, inspiring neatness and decency in the servant-girl, propriety of carriage and refined manners in her mistress, uprightness, manliness, and generosity in the head of the family. It diffuses a light over town and country; it covers the soil with handsome edifices and smiling gardens; it tills the field, it stocks and embellishes the shop. It is the stimulating principle of providence, on the one hand, and of free expenditure on the other; of an honourable ambition, and of elegant enjoyment. It breathes upon the face of the community, and the hollow sepulchre is forthwith beautiful to look upon."

So far Dr. Newman is writing in a spirit and in terms which any Evangelical preacher or author might ex animo adopt in his own sermons or books; indeed, those who have been nurtured in any of the old-fashioned Evangelical schools of thought will at once recognize a note which is perfectly familiar to them. No one, indeed, of any orthodox Christian school can pretend that religion and morality such as are here indicated can by any stretch of construction be called by the Christian name. They may be called quasi-Stoical, or modern Liberal, or highly-respectable :