s mornings to the pen-work _de la copie_, and his afternoons
to _la promenade_, blank paper, book, and pencil in hand; for, says he,
"having never been able to write and think at my ease except in the open
air, _sule dio_, I was not tempted to change my method, and I reckoned
not a little on the forest of Montmorency becoming--for it was close to
my door--my _cabinet de travail_." In another place he affirms his sheer
incapacity for meditation by day, except in the act of walking; the
moment he stopped walking, he stopped thinking, too, for his head worked
with, and only with, his feet. "_De jour je ne puis mediter qu'en
marchant; sitot que je m'arrete je ne pense plus, et ma tete ne va
qu'avec mes pieds._" _Salvitur ambulando_, whatever intellectual problem
is solved by Jean Jacques. His strength was not to sit still. His
Reveries, by the way, were written on scraps of paper of all sorts and
sizes, on covers of old letters, and on playing cards--all covered with
a small, neat handwriting. He was as economical of material as was
"Paper-sparing Pope" himself.

In some points Chateaubriand was intellectually, or, rather,
sentimentally, related to Rousseau, but not in his way of using ink and
paper.

Chateaubriand sat at a table well supplied with methodically arranged
heaps of paper cut in sizes; and as soon as a page was blotted over in
the biggest of his big handwriting,--according to M. de Marcullus, with
almost as many drops of ink as words,--he tossed it aside, without using
pounce or blotting-paper, to blot and be blotted by its accumulating
fellows. Now and then he got up from this work, to look out of the
window, or to pace the room, as if in quest of new ideas. The chapter
finished, he collected all the scattered leaves, and revised them in due
form--more frequently adding to than curtailing their fair proportions,
and paying very special attention to the punctuation of his sentences.

Lessing's inherent nobility of intellect is said to have been typified
in his manner of study. When in the act of composition he walked up and
down till his eye was caught by the title of some book. He would open
it, his brother tells us, and, if struck by some sentence which pleased
him, he would copy it out; in so doing, a train of thought would be
suggested, and this would be immediately followed up--provided his mood
was just right.

The early morning would lure Jean Paul Richter to take out his ink-flask
and write as he wa