t his stories are so slightly constructed as to
remind us of the showman's thread with which he draws up his pictures
and presents them successively to the eye of the spectator.... Against
this slovenly indifference we have already remonstrated, and we again
enter our protest.... We are the more earnest in this matter, because it
seems that the author errs chiefly from carelessness. There may be
something of system in it, however, for we have remarked, that with an
attention which amounts even to affectation, he has avoided the common
language of narrative and thrown his story, as much as possible, into a
dramatic shape. In many cases this has added greatly to the effect, by
keeping both the actors and action continually before the reader and
placing him, in some measure, in the situation of an audience at a
theater, who are compelled to gather the meaning of the scene from what
the dramatis personae say to each other, and not from any explanation
addressed immediately to themselves. But though the author gain this
advantage, and thereby compel the reader to think of the personages of
the novel and not of the writer, yet the practice, especially pushed to
the extent we have noticed, is a principal cause of the flimsiness and
incoherent texture of which his greatest admirers are compelled to
complain."[360]

Lockhart points out that the fruit of Scott's study of Dryden may have
been to fortify his opinion as to what the greatness of literature
really consists in, and applies to Scott himself some of the phrases
used in the characterization of the earlier poet. "'Rapidity of
conception, a readiness of expressing every idea, without losing
anything by the way'; 'perpetual animation and elasticity of thought';
and language 'never laboured, never loitering, never (in Dryden's own
phrase) cursedly confined,'" are set over against "pointed and nicely
turned lines, sedulous study, and long and repeated correction and
revision," and are pronounced the superior virtues.[361] The concluding
paragraph of Scott's review of a poem on the Battle of Talavera
exemplifies his use of this doctrine. "We have shunned, in the present
instance," he says, "the unpleasant task of pointing out and dwelling
upon individual inaccuracies. There are several hasty expressions, flat
lines, and deficient rhymes, which prove to us little more than that the
composition was a hurried one. These, in a poem of a different
description, we should have thought