efrain _tout trouves_:

"Jacques, leve-toi;
Voici venir l'huissier du roi";

and in a day or two the song was a made thing.

The laborious pains bestowed by Alfieri on the process of composition
may seem at first sight hard to reconcile with his impulsive character.
If he approved his first sketch of a piece,--after laying it by for some
time, not approaching it again until his mind was free of the
subject,--he submitted it to what he called "development," _i. e._,
writing out in prose the indicated scenes, with all the force at his
command, but without stopping to analyze a thought or correct an
expression. "He then proceeded to versify at his leisure the prose he
had written, selecting with care the ideas he thought best, and
rejecting those which he deemed" unworthy of a place. Nor did he ever
yet regard this work as finished, but "incessantly polished it verse by
verse and made continual alterations," as might seem to him expedient.

Hartley Coleridge so far resembled Alfieri that it was his custom to put
aside what he had written for some months, till the heat and excitement
of composition had effervesced, and then he thought it was in a fair
condition to criticise. But he seldom altered. "Strike the nail on the
anvil," was his advice; he never "kneaded or pounded" his thoughts,
which have been described as always coming out _cap-a-pie_, like a troop
in quick march. He used to brandish his pen in the act of composition,
now and then beating time with his foot, and breaking out into a shout
at any felicitous idea.

III.

Speed in Writing.

Dr. Johnson was a very rapid writer. A modern critic says of him: "He
had but to dip his pen in ink, and there flowed out a current of thought
and language wide and voluminous as the Ganges in flood." Some of the
best papers in the _Rambler_ were written "_currente calamo_." Johnson
struck off his _Ramblers_ and _Idlers_ at a heat when the summons of the
press forbade his indolence to put off his work another moment: he did
not give himself even a minute to read over his papers before they went
to the printers. Often he sent a portion of the copy of an essay, and
wrote the remainder while the earlier part was printing. His "Life of
Savage" was dashed off at one sitting. Sir Joshua Reynolds was so
fascinated with this eloquent and touching narrative, that he could not
lay it down until he had finished it. Johnson would not have written
"Rasselas" ex