A day or two after a terrible storm, now five
or six years ago, I visited a Channel seaport in
company with a friend. A wreck had been found
out at sea, without a surviving soul on board.
It had been bound, from London, for Australia.
Towed into harbour, the stores left remaining in
it had been taken out for sale and ranged in
heterogeneous groups along the quay. Each
group was the nucleus of an unwritten romance,
amongst whose personages each class of
passenger was represented. It was the most touching
elegy I have ever seen on the vanity of
human wishes, the nullity of human projects.
It made you ask yourself whether, in this brief
life, it is possible to reckon upon anything.
Here lay all that was left of people who, a
few hours ago, were in all the plenitude of life
and hope. The other day, they were laughing,
scheming, quarrelling even just a little, perhaps
—doing anything but dream of an imminent
death; and to-day they have disappeared so
completely as not even to leave a grave to continue
the memory of their names. "Man proposes,
God disposes," I said to myself, in awe and pity.

Amongst other things, were two large
photographs on paper, beautifully executed and
scarcely injured, of a new-married couple, all
radiant and joyous. The gentleman was the
proprietor of a fine estate, who had come to
England to fetch his bride and conduct her to his
home at the antipodes. And then there was an
elegant cottage piano, which was to charm their
evenings, and recal the melodies of Auld Lang
Syne. Its cover had been wrenched off by the
waves; its keys were swollen and clogged by
the sands; and dirty little children twanged its
rusting strings, wondering at what they had
never seen before, the interior of a pianoforte.
Other ornaments of social life were scattered
about, smashed and useless. And then the
crew had their little luxuries, their schemes for
decorating a colonial dwelling. Framed prints,
portraits, gaudy bright crockery, not for use but
only for show; with half-demolished sets of
willow-pattern services, which might, perhaps,
be used on Sundays, or at least twice or thrice
a year.

The flour-barrels begun by those who were
never to empty them; the medicines, reserved
for those whose last mortal agony was over;
the preserved meats, fruits, and vegetables, kept
back to vary the diet of people whose state was
now invariably fixed for all eternity; that well-
hooped cask of extra-strong ale, brewed to
stand the voyage it was never to accomplish,
and which had perfectly resisted the beating of
the storm; that equally well fortified puncheon
of above-proof rum, which had offered an equally
gallant resistance; each suggested their moral
and told their tale. A hospitable neighbour of
mine bought at the sale that ale and that rum;
and I can never taste a glass of the magnificent
stingo, nor smell the perfume of the rum steaming
from a punch or a grog, without having the
whole scene—the gusty day, and the ownerless
chattels—brightly revived on the retina of my
memory.

My companion was so deeply impressed, that
he determined to make that wreck the subject
of an article for publication in some magazine.
He went home full of thought, mended his pens,
filled his inkstand, and sat down to a pile of
virgin paper. After sitting until he was tired,
he rose without inditing a word. He was like
the chieftain who, "with twice ten thousand
men, Walked up a hill, and then came down
again." He could have told the tale well; but
it would not come in writing. He has made, I
believe, no subsequent attempt to contribute to
the periodicals; and has finally come to the painful
conclusion, "I can talk, but I cannot write."

Certain departments, likewise, of the art of
writing present their difficulties to certain minds.
I have heard a gentleman of distinguished
literary attainments—a brilliant talker, lately
deceased—wonder how clergymen contrived to
write sermons; how anybody could write a
sermon!

A living scientific celebrity who has even
written books, one of which has become world-
famous, once expressed to me his inability to
understand how a writer could go to a given
place—say, for instance, to a botanic garden—
with the intention of writing a paper on it. For
there was no point to establish, no discovery
to make, no theory to confirm or illustrate;
nothing to argue about, to prove, or disprove.
The locality of the garden was an undeniable
topographical fact, of whose existence everybody
was aware; and what was to be said, or
written, about an indisputable fact? To such
minds, essayists are enigmas, whilst poets must
be incomprehensible puzzles.

Writing is no more like conversing, than a
solitary game of cards, patience, to wit, or the
fortune-teller's interpretation of the outspread
pack, is like a well-contested rubber at whist.
In conversing, you have to give and take; to
deal regularly round to all the players; to follow
suit, or, if you cannot, to trump with a well-bred
pleasantry or joke. You may play up to your
partner's hand, if you have a partner, or
establish a see-saw: when a game reaches its natural
conclusion, you begin a new one.

In writing, you can remodel, erase, and
retouch, until the result pleases your mind. The
reader little knows the difference between many
a first rough draft, and the printed page which he
skims so pleasantly. Byron coarsely propounds
the truth, when he states that "your easy (i.e.
careless) writing is d—— hard reading." But
poetry naturally requires careful correction.
Some writers may be compared to workers in
mosaic. They collect a heap of glittering
fragments; they arrange them in groups, according
to their various colours, shades, and hues; and
then they work them up together into a brilliant
and striking picture. The artist's skill must
be sufficient to conceal the art by which it is
done. Some at least of Southey's prose was
highly polished, well combined mosaic. The
notes to Moore's Lalla Rookh give the matrix
whence he extracted much of his jewellery.
Sometimes, after wading through a bulky volume, he