Bayle, an experienced observer in literary matters, tells us that correction is by no means practicable by some authors, as in the case of Ovid.  In exile, his compositions were nothing more than spiritless repetitions of what he had formerly written.  He confesses both negligence and idleness in the corrections of his works.  The vivacity which animated his first productions failing him when he revised his poems, he found correction too laborious, and he abandoned it.  This, however, was only an excuse.  “It is certain that some authors cannot correct.  They compose with pleasure, and with ardour; but they exhaust all their force.  They fly with but one wing when they review their works; the first fire does not return; there is in their imagination a certain calm which hinders their pen from making any progress.  Their mind is like a boat, which only advances by the strength of oars.”

Dr. More, the Platonist, had such an exuberance of fancy, that correction was a much greater labour than composition.  He used to say, that in writing his works, he was forced to cut his way through a crowd of thoughts as through a wood, and that he threw off in his compositions as much as would make an ordinary philosopher.  More was a great enthusiast, and, of course, an egotist, so that criticism ruffled his temper, notwithstanding all his Platonism.  When accused of obscurities and extravagances, he said that, like the ostrich, he laid his eggs in the sands, which would prove vital and prolific in time; however, these ostrich-eggs have proved to be addled.

A habit of correctness in the lesser parts of composition will assist the higher.  It is worth recording that the great Milton was anxious for correct punctuation, and that Addison was solicitous after the minutiae of the press.  Savage, Armstrong, and others, felt tortures on similar objects.  It is said of Julius Scaliger, that he had this peculiarity in his manner of composition:  he wrote with such accuracy that his MSS. and the printed copy corresponded page for page, and line for line.

Malherbe, the father of French poetry, tormented himself by a prodigious slowness; and was employed rather in perfecting than in forming works.  His muse is compared to a fine woman in the pangs of delivery.  He exulted in his tardiness, and, after finishing a poem of one hundred verses, or a discourse of ten pages, he used to say he ought to repose for ten years.  Balzac, the first writer in French prose who gave majesty and harmony to a period, did not grudge to expend a week on a page, never satisfied with his first thoughts.  Our “costive” Gray entertained the same notion:  and it is hard to say if it arose from the sterility of their genius, or their sensibility of taste.

The MSS. of Tasso, still preserved, are illegible from the vast number of their corrections.  I have given a fac-simile, as correct as it is possible to conceive, of one page of Pope’s MS. Homer, as a specimen of his continual corrections and critical erasures.  The celebrated Madame Dacier never could satisfy herself in translating Homer:  continually retouching the version, even in its happiest passages.  There were several parts which she translated in six or seven manners; and she frequently noted in the margin—­I have not yet done it.