umber of historical subjects to him,--"People will not consider that a
thing may already be so well told in history, that romance ought not in
prudence to meddle with it";[438] and at another time he spoke of "the
usual habit of antiquarians," to "neglect what is useful for things that
are merely curious."[439]

Aside from the familiar knowledge of ancient manners which he thought
enabled him to give his tales the necessary touch of novelty, and from
the "hurried frankness," or spontaneity of style which endowed them with
vitality, Scott believed that his talents included a special knack at
description. He felt, however, that a sense of the picturesque in action
was a different thing from a similar perception in regard to scenery,
and that though the first was natural to him, he was obliged to use
effort to develop the second.[440] Some study of drawing in his youth
helped him to comprehend the demands of perspective, and he endeavored
to carry out the principle of describing a scene in the way in which it
would naturally strike the spectator, neither overloading with confused
detail nor over-emphasizing what should be subordinate.[441] That his
plan was consciously adopted may be seen from his discussion of Byron's
skill in description and from his comments on the descriptive passages
of the mediaeval romances.[442]

At the same time he understood the advantages of the realistic method.
On one occasion he stated as his creed, "that in nature herself no two
scenes were exactly alike, and that whoever copied truly what was before
his eyes would possess the same variety in his descriptions, and exhibit
apparently an imagination as boundless as the range of nature in the
scenes he recorded; whereas, whoever trusted to imagination would soon
find his own mind circumscribed and contracted to a few favourite
images, and the repetition of these would sooner or later produce that
very monotony and barrenness which had always haunted descriptive poetry
in the hands of any but the patient worshippers of truth."[443]
Wordsworth disapproved of Scott's method in description. He is quoted as
having said: "Nature does not permit an inventory to be made of her
charms! He should have left his pencil and note-book at home [and] fixed
his eye as he walked with a reverent attention on all that surrounded
him."[444] Somewhat like a rejoinder sounds another remark of Scott's,
in phrases that Wordsworth would have detested. Scott said cheerfu