One would like very much to be informed how Shakespeare put
together the scenes of Hamlet or Macbeth, whether the subtile thought
accumulated easily on the page before him, or whether he struggled for
it with anxiety and distrust. We know that Milton troubled himself about
little matters of punctuation, and obliged the printer to take special
note of his requirements, scolding him roundly when he neglected his
instructions. We also know that Melanchthon was in his library hard at
work by two or three o'clock in the morning both in summer and winter,
and that Sir William Jones began his studies with the dawn.
The most popular female writer of America, whose great novel struck a
chord of universal sympathy throughout the civilized world, has habits
of composition peculiarly her own, and unlike those belonging to any
author of whom we have record. She _croons_, so to speak, over her
writings, and it makes very little difference to her whether there is a
crowd of people about her or whether she is alone during the composition
of her books. "Uncle Tom's Cabin" was wholly prepared for the press in a
little wooden house in Maine, from week to week, while the story was
coming out in a Washington newspaper. Most of it was written by the
evening lamp, on a pine table, about which the children of the family
were gathered together conning their various lessons for the next day.
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