ssed to students, but in their
application to poets and novelists they have far greater significance.
It may be said that journalists (whose writings, it is whispered, have a
close connection with fiction) always write in the 'small hours,' but
their mode of life is more or less shaped to meet their exceptional
requirements; whereas we storytellers live like other people (only more
purely), and if we consume the midnight oil, use perforce another system
of illumination also--we burn the candle at both ends. A great novelist
who adopted this baneful practice and indirectly lost his life by it
(through insomnia) notes what is very curious, that notwithstanding his
mind was so occupied, when awake, with the creatures of his imagination,
he never dreamt of them; which I think is also the general experience.
But he does not tell us for how many hours _before_ he went to sleep,
and tossed upon his restless pillow till far into the morning, he was
unable to get rid of those whom his enchanter's wand had summoned.[8]
What is even more curious than the story-teller's never dreaming of the
shadowy beings who engross so much of his thoughts, is that (so far as
my own experience goes at least) when a story is once written and done
with, no matter how forcibly it may have interested and excited the
writer during its progress, it fades almost instantly from the mind, and
leaves, by some benevolent arrangement of nature, a _tabula rasa_--a
blank space for the next one. Everyone must recollect that anecdote of
Walter Scott, who, on hearing one of his own poems ('My hawk is tired of
perch and hood') sung in a London drawing-room, observed with innocent
approbation, 'Byron's, of course;' and so it is with us lesser folks. A
very humorous sketch might be given (and it would not be overdrawn) of
some prolific novelist getting hold, under some strange roof, of the
'library edition' of his own stories, and perusing them with great
satisfaction and many appreciative ejaculations, such as 'Now this _is_
good;' 'I wonder how it will end;' or 'George Eliot's, _of course_!

[8] Speaking of dreams, the composition of Khubla Khan and of one
or two other literary fragments during sleep has led to the belief
that dreams are often useful to the writer of fiction; but in my
own case, at least, I can recall but a single instance of it, nor
have I ever heard of their doing one pennyworth of good to any of
my contemporaries.

Alth