This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1783 edition. Excerpt: ... I see nothing clearly; I cannot write a single word; I must wait. Insensibly this vast emotion is suppressed, the chaos is dispersed; each thing takes its place, but slowly, and after a long and consused agitation. Have you ever seen an opera in Italy? In changing the scenes there reigns a difagreeable disorder on these grand theatres, which lasts a considerable time: the decorations are all intermixed; you see in every part a pulling and hauling about which gives pain; you think the whole is turning topsy.turvy. By degrees, everything is, however, brought to its place, nothing is wanting, and you are greatly surprised to find a ravishing sight succeed this long tumult. This piece of work nearly resembles that which operates in my brain, when I would write. Had I first known how to wait, and then render, with all their beauties, the things thus painted there, few authors would have surpassed me. Thence comes the extreme difficulty I find in writing. My manuscripts scratched out, blotted, mixed, not legible, attest the trouble they cost me. Not one but I was obliged to transcribe four or five times before it went to the press. I never could do any thing, the pen in hand, opposite a table and paper: 'twas in my walks, amidst rocks and woods; 'twas in the night, during my slumbers; I wrote in my brain, you may judge how slowly, parti cularly to a man deprived of verbal memory, and who, in his life, never could retain six verses by heart. Some of my periods have been turned and winded five or six nights in my head before they were in a state for going on paper. From thence, likewise, 1 succeed better in works which demand labour, than in those which must have a certain airiness: ) as letters, a style I could never get the tone of, and whose...