'Mozart composed, whenever he had the opportunity, in the soft air of
fine weather. His _Don Giovanni_ and the _Requiem_ were written in a
bowling-green and a garden. Chatterton found a full moon favourable to
poetic invention, and he often sat up all night to enjoy its solemn
shining. Winter-time was most agreeable to Crabbe. He delighted in a
heavy fall of snow; and it was during a severe storm which blocked him
within doors, that he portrayed the strange miseries of Sir Eustace
Grey.'

There may be something in this supposed influence of temperature and
seasons; but there certainly is no general law observable in the
matter. Shakspeare asks--

'Oh who can take a fire in his hand
By thinking of the frosty Caucasus?
Or wallow naked in December's snows
By bare remembrance of the summer's heat?'

He might have been answered by Moore, who shut himself up in the
wintry wilds of Derbyshire to write _Lalla Rookh_--a poem breathing of
the perfumes, and glowing in the sunlight of the golden East; and by
Scott, who, in Jermyn Street, St James's, with miles of brick houses
round him, produced his famous introductions to _Marmion_, some of
which may rank with the finest descriptions of natural scenery in the
language. But the way in which people are influenced seems utterly
capricious. We know a writer who is always unfavourably affected by a
dull, still atmosphere, and whose faculties are as invariably
exhilarated by a high wind. Cloudy weather does not influence him
disagreeably if it be stormy, but calm, leaden November glooms oppress
him with a feeling bordering upon stupor. These are altogether