d
seconds of the Time that flies,) there came yet another chiming of
the clock, and then were the same disconcert and tremulousness and
meditation as before.

* * * * *

From his "Essays."

=_222._= The Philosophy of Composition.

There is a radical error, I think, in the usual mode of constructing
a story. Either history affords a thesis--or one is suggested by an
incident of the day--or, at best, the author sets himself to work in
the combination of striking events to form merely the basis of his
narrative--designing, generally, to fill in with description, dialogue,
or autorial comment, whatever crevices of fact, or action, may, from
page to page, render themselves apparent.

I prefer commencing with the consideration of an _effect_, keeping
originality _always_ in view--for he is false to himself who ventures to
dispense with so obvious and so easily attainable a source of interest.
I say to myself, in the first place, "Of the innumerable effects, or
impressions, of which the heart, the intellect, or (more generally)
the soul, is susceptible, what one shall I, on the present occasion,
select?" Having chosen a novel, first, and secondly a vivid, effect, I
consider whether it can be best wrought by incident or tone, whether by
ordinary incidents and peculiar tone, or the converse, or by peculiarity
both of incident and tone--afterward looking about me (or rather within)
for such combinations of event, or tone, as shall best aid me in the
construction of the effect.

I have often thought how interesting a magazine paper might be written
by any author who would--that is to say, who could--detail, step by
step, the process by which any one of his compositions attained its
ultimate point of completion. Why such a paper has never been given to
the world, I am much at a loss to say--but, perhaps, the autorial vanity
has had more to do with the omission than any one other cause. Most
writers, poets in especial, prefer having it understood that they
compose by a species of fine frenzy, an ecstatic intuition, and would
positively shudder at letting the public take a peep behind the scenes,
at the elaborate and vacillating crudities of thought--at the true
purposes seized only at the last moment--at the innumerable glimpses of
idea that arrived not at the maturity of full view--at the fully matured
fancies discarded in despair as unmanageable--at the cautious selections
and rejections--at