t.
Cecilia's feast; who, you know, is the patroness of music. This is
troublesome, and no way beneficial; but I could not deny the stewards,
who came in a body to my house to desire that kindness, one of them
being Mr. Bridgeman, whose parents are your mother's friends." This
account seems to imply, that the Ode was a work of some time; which is
countenanced by Dr. Birch's expression, that Dryden himself "observes,
in an original letter of his, that he was employed for almost a
fortnight in composing and correcting it."[25] On the other hand, the
following anecdote is told upon very respectable authority. "Mr. St.
John, afterwards Lord Bolingbroke, happening to pay a morning visit to
Dryden, whom he always respected, found him in an unusual agitation of
spirits, even to a trembling. On inquiring the cause, 'I have been up
all night,' replied the old bard: 'my musical friends made me promise to
write them an Ode for their feast of St. Cecilia: I have been so struck
with the subject which occurred to me, that I could not leave it till I
had _completed_ it; here it is, _finished_ at one sitting.' And
immediately he showed him _this_ Ode, which places the British lyric
poetry above that of any other nation."[26] These accounts are not,
however, so contradictory as they may at first sight appear. It is
possible that Dryden may have completed, at one sitting, the whole Ode,
and yet have employed a fortnight, or much more, in correction. There is
strong internal evidence to show that the poem was, speaking with
reference to its general structure, wrought off at once. A halt or
pause, even of a day, would perhaps have injured that continuous flow of
poetical language and description which argues the whole scene to have
arisen at once upon the author's imagination. It seems possible, more
especially in lyrical poetry, to discover where the author has paused
for any length of time; for the union of the parts is rarely so perfect
as not to show a different strain of thought and feeling. There may be
something fanciful, however, in this reasoning, which I therefore
abandon to the reader's mercy; only begging him to observe, that we have
no mode of estimating the exertions of a quality so capricious as a
poetic imagination; so that it is very possible, that the Ode to St.
Cecilia may have been the work of twenty-four hours, whilst correction
and emendations, perhaps of no very great consequence, occupied the
author as many days. Derr