single word, and must wait till all is over. Insensibly the agitation
subsides, the chaos acquires form, and each circumstance takes its
proper place. Have you never seen an opera in Italy where during the
change of scene everything is in confusion, the decorations are
intermingled, and any one would suppose that all would be overthrown;
yet by little and little, everything is arranged, nothing appears
wanting, and we feel surprised to see the tumult succeeded by the most
delightful spectacle. This is a resemblance of what passes in my brain
when I attempt to write; had I always waited till that confusion was
past, and then pointed, in their natural beauties, the objects that had
presented themselves, few authors would have surpassed me.

Thence arises the extreme difficulty I find in writing; my manuscripts,
blotted, scratched, and scarcely legible, attest the trouble they cost
me; nor is there one of them but I have been obliged to transcribe four
or five times before it went to press. Never could I do anything when
placed at a table, pen in hand; it must be walking among the rocks, or
in the woods; it is at night in my bed, during my wakeful hours, that I
compose; it may be judged how slowly, particularly for a man who has
not the advantage of verbal memory, and never in his life could retain
by heart six verses. Some of my periods I have turned and returned in
my head five or six nights before they were fit to be put to paper:
thus it is that I succeed better in works that require laborious
attention than those that appear more trivial, such as letters, in
which I could never succeed, and being obliged to write one is to me a
serious punishment; nor can I express my thoughts on the most trivial
subjects without it costing me hours of fatigue. If I write
immediately what strikes me, my letter is a long, confused, unconnected
string of expressions, which, when read, can hardly be understood.