bly restored, in
which he wrote "Redgauntlet" and "Nigel."

It is strange, but only a part of the general simplicity of Scott's
genius, that these revivals of earlier power were unconscious, and that
the time of extreme weakness in which he wrote "St. Ronan's Well," was
that in which he first asserted his own restoration.

25. It is also a deeply interesting characteristic of his noble nature
that he never gains anything by sickness; the whole man breathes or
faints as one creature: the ache that stiffens a limb chills his heart,
and every pang of his stomach paralyzes the brain. It is not so with
inferior minds, in the workings of which it is often impossible to
distinguish native from narcotic fancy, and the throbs of conscience
from those of indigestion. Whether in exaltation or languor, the colors
of mind are always morbid which gleam on the sea for the "Ancient
Mariner," and through the casements on "St. Agnes' Eve"; but Scott is at
once blinded and stultified by sickness; never has a fit of the cramp
without spoiling a chapter, and is perhaps the only author of vivid
imagination who never wrote a foolish word but when he was ill.

It remains only to be noticed on this point that any strong natural
excitement, affecting the deeper springs of his heart, would at once
restore his intellectual powers to their fullness, and that, far towards
their sunset: but that the strong will on which he prided himself,
though it could trample upon pain, silence grief, and compel industry,
never could warm his imagination, or clear the judgment in his darker
hours.

I believe that this power of the heart over the intellect is common to
all great men: but what the special character of emotion was, that alone
could lift Scott above the power of death, I am about to ask the
reader, in a little while, to observe with joyful care.

26. The first series of romances then, above-named, are all that exhibit
the emphasis of his unharmed faculties. The second group, composed in
the three years subsequent to illness all but mortal, bear every one of
them more or less the seal of it.

They consist of the "Bride of Lammermuir," "Ivanhoe," the "Monastery,"
the "Abbot," "Kenilworth," and the "Pirate."[54] The marks of broken
health on all these are essentially twofold--prevailing melancholy, and
fantastic improbability. Three of the tales are agonizingly tragic, the
"Abbot" scarcely less so in its main event, and "Ivanhoe" deeply wounded
th