In his Life of the Right Reverend Ronald Knox Evelyn Waugh gives this charming example of a well-ordered relationship between an artist and his muse. Upon publication of Let Dons Delight, Ronald Knox wrote to Daphne Lady Acton:
Of course Let Dons Delight is due entirely to your influence. You
(i) forbade me to write a detective story, (ii) gave me the idea of the book, (iii) gingered me up to read all those books about it, (iv) let me bore you about it all the time it was being written, (v) marooned me at various times so that I had to write it, (vi) told me it was worth going on with, (vii) made me in a hurry to get it finished, so that I could dedicate it to you. In fact you are the formal, efficient, material and final cause of it. The Vulgate would never have been written but for St Paula saying 'Come on, now'.
