But then, it is
urged, Scott allowed himself to write with preposterous haste. And
Shakespeare, who never blotted a line! What is the great difference
between them? Mr. Carlyle feels that here too Scott has at least a very
good precedent to allege; but he endeavours to establish a distinction.
It was right, he says, for Shakespeare to write rapidly, 'being ready to
do it. And herein truly lies the secret of the matter; such swiftness of
writing, after due energy of preparation, is, doubtless, the right
method; the hot furnace having long worked and simmered, let the pure
gold flow out at one gush.' Could there be a better description of Scott
in his earlier years? He published his first poem of any pretensions at
thirty-four, an age which Shelley and Keats never reached, and which
Byron only passed by two years. 'Waverley' came out when he was
forty-three--most of our modern novelists have written themselves out
long before they arrive at that respectable period of life. From a child
he had been accumulating the knowledge and the thoughts that at last
found expression in his work. He had been a teller of stories before he
was well in breeches; and had worked hard till middle life in
accumulating vast stores of picturesque imagery. The delightful notes
to all his books give us some impression of the fulness of mind which
poured forth a boundless torrent of anecdote to the guests at
Abbotsford. We only repine at the prodigality of the harvest when we
forget the long process of culture by which it was produced. And, more
than this, when we look at the peculiar characteristics of Scott's
style--that easy flow of narrative never heightening into epigram, and
indeed, to speak the truth, full of slovenly blunders and amazing
grammatical solecisms, but also always full of a charm of freshness and
fancy most difficult to analyse--we may well doubt whether much labour
would have improved or injured him. No man ever depended more on the
perfectly spontaneous flow of his narratives. Carlyle quotes Schiller
against him, amongst other and greater names. We need not attempt to
compare the two men; but do not Schiller's tragedies smell rather
painfully of the lamp? Does not the professor of aesthetics pierce a
little too distinctly through the exterior of the poet? And, for one
example, are not Schiller's excellent but remarkably platitudinous
peasants in 'William Tell' miserably colourless alongside of Scott's
rough border dalesmen, r