In another he remarks: "As for style of writing, if one has
anything to say it drops from him simply as a stone falls to
the ground." We must conjecture a very large sense indeed
for the phrase "if one has anything to say." When truth
flows from a man, fittingly clothed in style and without
conscious effort, it is because the effort has been made and
the work practically completed before he sat down to write.
It is only out of fulness of thinking that expression drops
perfect like a ripe fruit; and when Thoreau wrote so
nonchalantly at his desk, it was because he had been
vigorously active during his walk. For neither clearness
compression, nor beauty of language, come to any living
creature till after a busy and a prolonged acquaintance with
the subject on hand. Easy writers are those who, like Walter
Scott, choose to remain contented with a less degree of
perfection than is legitimately within the compass of their
powers. We hear of Shakespeare and his clean manuscript; but
in face of the evidence of the style itself and of the
various editions of HAMLET, this merely proves that Messrs.
Hemming and Condell were unacquainted with the common enough
phenomenon called a fair copy. He who would recast a tragedy
already given to the world must frequently and earnestly have
revised details in the study. Thoreau himself, and in spite
of his protestations, is an instance of even extreme research
in one direction; and his effort after heroic utterance is
proved not only by the occasional finish, but by the
determined exaggeration of his style. "I trust you realise
what an exaggerator I am - that I lay myself out to
exaggerate," he writes. And again, hinting at the
explanation: "Who that has heard a strain of music feared