[368] His habit of carrying two trains of thought on together was
also responsible for slips in diction and syntax. An amanuensis working
for him noticed this peculiarity, and Scott said in his _Journal_:
"There must be two currents of ideas going on in my mind at the same
time.... I always laugh when I hear people say, Do one thing at once. I
have done a dozen things at once all my life."[369]

But the making of poetry required more attention. "Verse I write twice,
and sometimes three times over,"[370] he said, and one is moved to
wonder whether the distaste for writing poetry, that he professed about
1822, arose largely from a growing aversion to what he probably
considered extreme care in composition.[371] A series of three comments
on his own poetry may be given to illustrate his widely varying moods in
regard to it. They are all taken from letters written not far from the
time when _Marmion_ was published. "As for poetry, it is very little
labour to me; indeed 'twere pity of my life should I spend much time on
the light and loose sort of poetry which alone I can pretend to
write."[372] "I believe no man now alive writes more rapidly than I do
(no great recommendation), but I never think of making verses till I
have a sufficient stock of poetical ideas to supply them."[373] "If I
ever write another poem, I am determined to make every single couplet of
it as perfect as my uttermost care and attention can possibly
effect."[374] In spite of this momentary resolution to take more pains
with his next poem, he was unable to do so when the time came; or if, as
in the case of _Rokeby_ he did make the attempt, the results seemed to
him unsatisfactory. Yet verse required much more careful finishing than
prose, even when it was written by Scott, and this fact has been too
little emphasized in discussions of his transition from verse to prose
romances.

Scott's temperamental aversion to revising what he had once written was
evidently sanctioned by his literary creed. Near the end of his life he
recalled how he had submitted one of his earliest poems to the criticism
of several acquaintances, with the consequence that after he had adopted
their suggestions, hardly a line remained unaltered, and yet the changes
failed to satisfy the critics.[375] He said: "This unexpected result,
after about a fortnight's anxiety, led me to adopt a rule from which I
have seldom departed during more than thirty years of literary life.
When a frie