Authors Who Have Wept With Their Characters.
Are authors as sensitive as their; readers to the misfortunes of the characters they create? Are they moved to tears by the tragedies they describe with such tender feelings?
Hannah More confessed to weeping over her poem, 'Sir Eldred of the Bower and the Bleeding Rock." She was on a visit to the Garricks, and after dinner submitted the manuscript to her friend, "Garrick read 'Sir Eldred,' she wrote, "with all his pathos and all his! graces. L think I was never so ashamed in my life; but he read it so superbly that I cried like a child. Only think what a culeus thing, to cry at the reading of one's own -poetry:'~ Possibly, in this case, the gifted reader contributed to the power of the poem upon its writer, and it was his effective eloquence that carried its appeal to the breaking-point.
George Eliot was not ashamed to own that she was moved to tears by her own writing. "One night,'' she says, in an account of her work on Amos Barton, "G, (Mr. Lewes) went to town on purpose to leave me a quiet evening for writing it. 1 wrote the chapter from the news brought by the shepherd to Mrs. Hackit, to the moment when Amos is dragged from the bedside, and I read it to G. when he came home. We both cried over it, and then he came up to me and kissed me,. saying: 'I think your pathos is better than your fun.'
THACKERAY AND CoLonen Newcomer.
Thackeray's -intense feeling at the death of Colonel Newcome is a notable instance of an author's sympathy with a character of hi: imagination. The incident ha; been variously described Lowell met. the novelist looking serious and distressed. In answer to the{ poet's inquiry thackeray said: "Come into Evans's, and 1 will tell you all about I have killed the Colonel." They went in, and taking a seat in a remote corner of the room the novelist drew th fresh manuscript from his breast pocket, and in a quiet and half. plaintive voice read the touching his face as he came to the end, and articulate sob.
Many tears have fallen on to the pages of Dickens's novels. When jWay so, but L could not help it,' there can be little doubt that tears stained the manuscript as well as the printed page. Dickens did give way to tears. He confessed ito Lady Blessington that all his "affections and passions got twined, and knotted up" when he wrote, and sometimes he indulged "ju what women call 'a good ery.'
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.