The Poetical Works of Thomas Moore :: :: University of Virginia Library

Different Attitudes in which Authors compose.—Bayes, Henry Stephens, Herodotus, &c.—Writing in Bed—in the Fields. —Plato and Sir Richard Blackmore.—Fiddling with Gloves and Twigs.—Madame de Staël.—Rhyming on the Road, in an old Calêche.

What various attitudes, and ways,
And tricks, we authors have in writing!
While some write sitting, some, like Bayes,
Usually stand, while they're inditing.
Poets there are, who wear the floor out,
Measuring a line at every stride;
While some, like Henry Stephens, pour out
Rhymes by the dozen, while they ride.

274

Herodotus wrote most in bed;
And Richerand, a French physician,
Declares the clock-work of the head
Goes best in that reclin'd position.
If you consult Montaigne and Pliny on
The subject, 'tis their joint opinion
That Thought its richest harvest yields
Abroad, among the woods and fields;
That bards, who deal in small retail,
At home may, at their counters, stop;
But that the grove, the hill, the vale,
Are Poesy's true wholesale shop.
And, verily, I think they're right—
For, many a time, on summer eves,
Just at that closing hour of light,
When, like an Eastern Prince, who leaves
For distant war his Haram bowers,
The Sun bids farewell to the flowers,
Whose heads are sunk, whose tears are flowing
Mid all the glory of his going!—

275

Ev'n I have felt, beneath those beams,
When wand'ring through the fields alone,
Thoughts, fancies, intellectual gleams,
Which, far too bright to be my own,
Seem'd lent me by the Sunny Power,
That was abroad at that still hour.

If thus I've felt, how must they feel,
The few, whom genuine Genius warms;
Upon whose souls he stamps his seal,
Graven with Beauty's countless forms;—
The few upon this earth, who seem
Born to give truth to Plato's dream,
Since in their thoughts, as in a glass,
Shadows of heavenly things appear,
Reflections of bright shapes that pass
Through other worlds, above our sphere!

But this reminds me I digress;—
For Plato, too, produc'd, 'tis said,
(As one, indeed, might almost guess,)
His glorious visions all in bed.

276

'Twas in his carriage the sublime
Sir Richard Blackmore used to rhyme;
And (if the wits don't do him wrong)
'Twixt death and epics pass'd his time,
Scribbling and killing all day long—
Like Phœbus in his car, at ease,
Now warbling forth a lofty song,
Now murdering the young Niobes.

There was a hero 'mong the Danes,
Who wrote, we're told, 'mid all the pains
And horrors of exenteration,
Nine charming odes, which, if you'll look,
You'll find preserv'd, with a translation,
By Bartholinus in his book.

277

In short, 'twere endless to recite
The various modes in which men write.
Some wits are only in the mind,
When beaus and belles are round them prating;
Some, when they dress for dinner, find
Their muse and valet both in waiting;
And manage, at the self-same time,
To' adjust a neckcloth and a rhyme.

Some bards there are who cannot scribble
Without a glove, to tear or nibble;
Or a small twig to whisk about—
As if the hidden founts of Fancy,
Like wells of old, were thus found out
By mystic tricks of rhabdomancy.
Such was the little feathery wand ,
That, held for ever in the hand
Of her , who won and wore the crown
Of female genius in this age,
Seem'd the conductor, that drew down
Those words of lightning to her page.

278

As for myself—to come, at last,
To the odd way in which I write—
Having employ'd these few months past
Chiefly in travelling, day and night,
I've got into the easy mode,
Of rhyming thus along the road—
Making a way-bill of my pages,
Counting my stanzas by my stages—
'Twixt lays and re-lays no time lost—
In short, in two words, writing post.

Pleraque sua carmina equitans composuit. —Paravicin. Singular.

“Mes pensées dorment, si je les assis.”

—Montaigne.

Animus eorum qui in aperto aere ambulant, attollitur.

Pliny.

The only authority I know for imputing this practice to Plato and Herodotus, is a Latin poem by M. de Valois on his Bed, in which he says:—

Lucifer Herodotum vidit Vesperque cubantem,
Desedit totos heic Plato sæpe dies.

Sir Richard Blackmore was a physician, as well as a bad poet.

Eâdem curâ nec minores inter cruciatus animam infelicem agenti fuit Asbiorno Prudæ Danico heroi, cum Bruso ipsum, intestina extrahens, immaniter torqueret, tunc enim novem carmina cecinit, &c. —Bartholin. de Causis Contempt. Mort.

Made of paper, twisted up like a fan or feather.

Madame de Staël.