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Authors And Their Works

Authors And Their Works image
Parent Issue
Day
29
Month
July
Year
1870
Copyright
Public Domain
OCR Text

JoLn Estén Cooke reoently had a pleasant article with tbis title ia Appl. ton't Journal, in whiib Le Bays truly wbat our authors nocd most, is, I tbiolc' i oa!ni and healthful idleness, giviog thé rain time to racuperate and oollect ita nergies, and makes this interesting calulation : It is astonishing how muoh is acoomlishod by the steady method of doinij nything- the " tro t " procesa- as opposed to the " spasinodic." Tho reuk in the production of books will probtbly startle nomo readers; and if thsy iuvo mot with Uulwer's statement that ie wrote but tbree hours a dav, I aa ancy thcir incredulity. It ig noredible bey will say, that this long list of volumes, l'rom " Falkland " and " Pelham " o My Novel nnd ' The Strango Story," could havo been written by one nan working but three hours a day. And yet nothiog is susceptible of easier roof. Say that an author in bis three ïours of work produces ten pages of manuscript of letter paper size, or wenty pages of note paper size. This is not a difficult task, aod I hink it s li:8s than authors geoerally write in the time mentioned. Now I ara not going to assume that a man will e able to write twenty pages of manucript every working day from the agO of tweoty to threescore-aud ten, and asound you, worthy reader, with tbe reult- some three hundred thousand pages, or three hundred volumes ! Such a calculation would be absurd in every view. But it is not absurd to say that, with e?ery drawback, a man may work at his pen three hours a day, for four days in tho week, during one-half of ach year. That, you perceive, leaves him six months in tbe year for idlenesi, other business, or sickness, two days in ach week of the other six months for he same, and all the Sundays. Now et us make tbe computation - or, to ave you the troublo, here is the result : Three hours' work, four days in the weck, for half a year, would result in wo thousand pages of manuscript- two rdinary duodécimo volumes of four or ive hundred pages each, which are, I hink, as much as any author ought to lublish in one year. Now, say that this ate of production is kept up from tho age of thirty to the age of fifty only bat is to say, during the prime and vigor of man's faculties - which would ;ive the writer thirty years absoluto eisure - tea before thirty and twenty fifty - in addition to his xesting polls of sk months in each year, and bree days in each weck. Tbe result of hose twenty years will be forty thonsind pages of manuscript, or forty volume -as many nearly as Sir Walter Scotb iroduced, or certainly as many as any one human boiug, however great his geuius, has the right to inflict upon tho eading portion of his fellow-creatures.

Article

Subjects
Old News
Michigan Argus