Scott's Method of Work.

Auckland Star, Volume VI, Issue 1695, 24 July 1875, Page 5 (Supplement)

Scott's Method of Work.

Some of Sir "Walter Scott's books were penned as fast as his quill could ' trot' over the page; but then 34 years had passed over his head when he wrote his Lay, and 43 when Waverley was published—to accomplish such a result during which he had steeped his soul iv archaeological lore, border legends and ballads, and studied character with unwavering minuteness. Nothing could exceed his care when ' getting up' a subject. For example, when writing MoTceby he visited Mr. Morritt, and said he wanted 'a good robbers' cave and an old churGh of the right sort.' That gentleman says: ' We rode out in quest of these, and he found what he wanted in the ancient slate quarries of Brignall and the ruined abbey of Eggleston. I observed him noting even the peculiar little wild flowers and herbs that, as it happened, grew around and on the side of a bold crag near his intended cave of Guy Denzil, and could not help saying that as he was not to be upon oath in his work, daisies, violets and primroses would be as poetical as any of the humble plants he was exmining. I laughed, in short at his scrupulousness, but understood him when he replied: ' That in nature herself no two scenes are exactly alike, and that whoever copied truly what was before his eyes would possess the same variety in his cescriptions 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.'' Lockhart was astonished to find that even during a trip in which he accompanied Sir "Walter in i anarkshire, the latter continued his literary labours. Wherever we slept, whether in the noble mansion or in the shabbiest of country inns, and whether the work was done after retiring to rest at night, or before an early start in the morning, he very rarely mounted the carriage again without having a packet of the wellknown aspect ready sealed and corded and addressed to his printer in I dinburgh.—Chambers' Magazine