The creative action is not voluntary at all, but automatic; we can only put the mind into the proper attitude, and wait for the wind, that blows where it listeth, to breathe over it.
Thus the true state of creative genius is allied to reverie, or dreaming.

If mind and body were both healthy and had food enough and fair play, I doubt whether any men would be more temperate than the imaginative classes.

But body and mind often flag,--perhaps they are ill-made to begin with, underfed with bread or ideas, overworked, or abused in some way.

The automatic action, by which genius wrought its wonders, fails.

There is only one thing which can rouse the machine; not will,--that cannot reach it; nothing but a ruinous agent, which hurries the wheels awhile and soon eats out the heart of the mechanism.