ee, that "training
of a lifetime" to rely upon; as from his earliest boyhood all Scott's
faculties had been consciously as well as unconsciously engaged in
absorbing and, by the aid of his astonishing memory, preserving the
vast materials on which he was able thus carelessly to draw.

Moreover, those who have read his manly autobiography know that this
speed was by no means all "ease," as witness the almost tragic
composition of _The Bride of Lammermoor_. If ever a writer scorned
delights and lived laborious days, it was Walter Scott. At the same time
the condition of his fame in the present day bears out the general truth
of my contention, for there is little doubt that he would be more widely
read than he is were it not for those too frequent _longueurs_ and inert
paddings which resulted from his too hurried workmanship.

Jane Austen is another example of comparatively rapid creation, writing
three of her best-known novels, _Pride and Prejudice_, _Sense and
Sensibility_, and _Northanger Abbey_ between the ages of twenty-one and
twenty-three. Yet _Pride and Prejudice_, which practically survives the
others, took her ten months to complete, and all her writings, it has
again to be said, had first been deeply and intimately "lived."

Charlotte Bronte was a year in writing _Jane Eyre_, spurred on to new
effort by the recent rejection of _The Professor_; but to write such a
book in a year cannot be called over-hasty production when one considers
how much of _Jane Eyre_ was drawn from Charlotte Bronte's own life, and
also how she and her sisters had been experimenting with literature from
their earliest childhood.

Thackeray considered an allowance of two years sufficient for the
writing of a good novel, but that seems little enough when one takes
into account the length of his best-known books, not to mention the
perfection of their craftsmanship. Dickens, for all the prodigious bulk
of his output, was rather a steady than a rapid writer. "He considered,"
says Forster, "three of his not very large manuscript pages a good, and
four an excellent, day's work."

_David Copperfield_ was about a year and nine months in the writing,
having been begun in the opening of 1849 and completed in October, 1850.
_Bleak House_ took a little longer, having been begun in November, 1851,
and completed in August, 1853. _Hard Times_ was a hasty piece of work,
written between the winter of 1853, and the summer of 1854, and it
cannot be con