am only six hours out of the twenty-four in bed. I study twelve, and
walk six. Oranges, exercise, and early rising serve to keep me
flourishing."

"Procter (Barry Cornwall) usually writes," says Willis, "in a small
closet adjoining his library. There is just room enough in it for a desk
and two chairs, and his favorite books, miniature likenesses of authors,
manuscripts, &c., piled around in true poetical confusion." He confines
his labors to the daytime, eschewing evening work. In a letter to a
friend, some years ago, he wrote: "I hope you will not continue to give
up your nights to literary undertakings. Believe me (who have suffered
bitterly for this imprudence) that nothing in the world of letters is
worth the sacrifice of health and strength and animal spirits which will
certainly follow this excess of labor."

Cowper, at the age of fifty-three, and at a busy period of his life,
says: "The morning is my writing time, and in the morning I have no
spirits. So much the worse for my correspondents. Sleep, that refreshes
my body, seems to cripple me in every other respect. As the evening
approaches I grow more alert, and when I am retiring to bed am more fit
for mental occupation than at any other time. So it fares with us whom
they call nervous."

He was very assiduous in labor. While he was translating Homer, he says:
"As soon as breakfast is over, I retire to my nutshell of a
summer-house, which is my verse manufactory, and here I abide seldom
less than three hours, and not often more." This little summer-house,
which he called his boudoir, was not much bigger than a sedan-chair; the
door of it opened into the garden, which was covered with pinks, roses,
and honeysuckles. The window opened into his neighbor's orchard. He
says: "It formerly served an apothecary, now dead, as a smoking-room;
and under my feet is a trapdoor, which once covered a hole in the ground
where he kept his bottles. At present, however, it is dedicated to
sublimer uses. Having lined it with garden mats, and furnished it with a
table and two chairs, here I write all that I write in summer-time,
whether to my friends or to the public.... In the afternoon I return to
it again, and all the daylight that follows, except what is sometimes
devoted to a walk, is given to Homer." In the evening he devoted himself
to transcribing, so that his mornings and evenings were, for the most
part, completely engaged. He read also, but less than he wrote; "for