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 processes 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
the painful erasures and interpolations- in a word, at the wheels
and pinions- the tackle for scene-shifting- the step-ladders, and
demon-traps- the cock's feathers, the red paint and the black patches,
which, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, constitute the
properties of the literary histrio.
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