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of his writings, while it gave him pain, did him no good, as it always came too late. This with him, as with many others, did not arise from any self-sufficiency, or overestimate of himself and of what he had achieved. In the Introduction to the Lady of the Lake' he says: "As the celebrated John Wilkes is said to have explained to his late Majesty, that he himself, amid his full tide of popularity, was never a Wilkite; so can I with honest truth exculpate myself from ever having been a partisan of my own poetry, even when it was in the highest fashion with the million."

Belton. Still a man must believe in himself, or he will do nothing great. If he had no faith in his work, there would be no sufficient spur and motive to do it.

Mallett. While we are doing it, yes; but after it is done, no. One might as well fall in love with one's own face, as with one's own work. It is astonishing, after it is done, how flat, tame, and unsatisfactory seem those passages which in the writing seemed so lively, spirited, and clever. There is always a terrible back-water after a thing is done.

Belton. Perhaps. Yet authors generally seem to be amazingly fond of their own works. As long as you praise them, they pretend to be modest; but attack them, and they will start up to prove that the very defects you point out constitute their greatest merits.

Mallett. What a wonderful worker Scott was! In quantity, to say nothing of quality, I know of no English writer of his time who can be compared with him; though in later days others have equalled him in the number of their works. He wrote, if I remember right, some 90 volumes. Of these, 48 volumes of novels, and 21 of history and biography, were produced between

1814 and 1831, or in about 17 years; which alone would give an average of 4 volumes a-year, or one for every three months. But, besides these, he had already written 21 volumes of poetry and prose, which had been previously published. And all this was done with an ease which seems astonishing, leaving him time to devote himself to society and all sorts of other occupations. That marvellous hand was never weary. The stream of fancy and invention never ran dry. Temporary disease did not check his inspiration, and one of his most striking works-one indeed in which he touched perhaps the highest point of his genius, 'The Bride of Lammermoor,'-was dictated from a bed of sickness. Not until paralysis had struck him down, and the hand of death was on him, did that pen, which had so long enchanted the world, drop from his hand. And what a loss he was! What possibilities of joy and delight and feeling died with him, when the splendid light of his genius, which had so long shed its glory on Scotland, dropped below the horizon! But go where you will in that romantic land, his genius still irradiates it. There is scarcely a rock, or a crag, or a lake, a city, a town, or a village, where his ideal creations do not live and walk and breathe, more real than the actual men and women who tread the streets, or climb the fastnesses, or trample upon the heath of Scotland.

Belton. I am glad to hear you speak with such enthusiasm of him. It is the fashion, I fear, now to rank him in literature far lower than he deserves

"So our virtues Lie in the interpretation of the time. One fire drives out one fire, one nail one nail."

When he wrote he was almost alone in the field. But literature has

us.

Mallett. I don't know that they have altogether changed for the better. Where is the "Great Magician" to take his place? For great magician he was; and out of the realms of history and of ideal regions beyond our ken, he had the art to evoke beings of the past, and of the imagination, with whom to delight Over all the scenery of Scotland he threw a veil of poetic enchantment. He amused us with his rich humour, he excited us with thrilling incidents, he painted with equal facility the days of chivalry and the common life of the people of his day. Some of the characters he drew are living portraits, drawn with wonderful truth to nature.

since swarmed with novelists, and and contrasted with eminent skill— tastes have changed. the comic, swaggering, good-natured, fussy little coward, Oliver Proudfute, who provokes a perpetual smile; and the sullen, irritable, proud, and revengeful coward Conachar, whom we cannot but pity, while we despise him. "The Fair Maid of Perth' was always a favourite of mine. It has perhaps more variety of interest, incident, and characters than any he ever wrote, and it never flags. Think of Ramorny, Rothesay, and Bonthron; the sturdy smith, and his comic reflection Proudfute; Dwining the physician; Simon Glover the plain burgess; Conachar the apprentice and the chief of his clan, and his heroic foster-father, who was ready to sacrifice life, family, everything for his weak-hearted foster-son. Think of the gay morrice-dancers, the riot and recklessness of the Duke and his boon companions, the darkened chamber of the mutilated Ramorny, and his grim interview with Rothesay and Dwining, the glee-woman at the castle, and the troubles of the honest and fiery smith, the pathetic death of the young prince, and the silence and horror that is thrown over it, and the exciting, vivid, and bloody fray of the clan Chattan and the clan Quhele, which is epic in its character. What variety, what interest, what excitement there is throughout!

What can be more admirable in drawing than Andrew Fairservice, Edie Ochiltree, Caleb Balderstone, the Antiquary Monkbarns, Dugald Dalgetty, Mause and Cuddie Headrigg, and a score of others in his comic gallery? What more touching and simple than Jeanie Deans? What more romantic than the Master of Ravenswood? What more fanatically powerful than Balfour of Burley? In his female heroines he was less successful; and it is only exceptionally that he gives us such spirited sketches as Die Vernon and Rebecca. But in his secondary female characters he is admirable, and in many of his men masterly. To me one of the most remarkable figures he ever drew was that of Conachar. Nothing could be more difficult than to provoke at once pity, contempt, and sympathy for a coward. Yet he has successfully achieved this feat; and, as far as I can recollect, it is the sole instance in English literature where such an attempt was ever made. More than this, he has drawn two cowards in this remarkable noveleach quite different from the other,

Belton. This novel was a favourite also of Goethe, which it may give you satisfaction to know; but I do not think ordinarily that it is reckoned one of Scott's best novels.

Mallett. Tastes differ. I only speak for myself. I always read it with pleasure.

Belton. You were speaking of the wonderful fertility of his genius, and of the amount of work he did. It is indeed surprising; but in quantity he cannot compare with

Lope de Vega, who, I fancy, is the most voluminous of all writers, and whose fertility of creation and ease of execution seems simply marvellous. He left, it is said, no less than 21 million 300 thousand verses in print, besides a mass of MSS. According to the account of Montalvan, himself a voluminous writer and the intimate friend of De Vega, he furnished the theatre with 1800 regular plays, and 400 autos or religious dramas. He himself states that he composed more than 100 comedies in the almost incredibly short space of 24 hours each, each comedy averaging between two and three thousand verses, a great part of them rhymed and interspersed with sonnets and difficult forms of versification. One would suppose that this was enough for any man to do; but besides this his time was occupied by various other occupations than writing. Nor did he break down under this labour: on the contrary, he lived to a good old age, dying when he was seventy-two, and thoroughly enjoying life. Supposing him to have given fifty years of his life to composition alone, he must have averaged a play a week, without taking into consideration 21 volumes quarto, 7 miscellaneous works including 5 epics, all of which are in print.

Mallett. The quantity is overpowering; but the quality, how is

that?

Belton. Remarkably good, considering the quantity. They had great success when they were written, though tastes have changed, and only very few of them still keep possession of the stage in Spain. Montalvan tells rather an amusing story about one of these plays. It seems that he himself once undertook, in connection with Lope, to furnish the theatre with a comedy at very short notice: accordingly he rose at 2 o'clock in the

morning in order to get through with his half of the play, and by 11 o'clock he had completed it. When one considers that a play ordinarily covered from 30 to 40 pages, each of 100 lines, this seems an extraordinary feat in itself, exhibiting at least immense facility. Six lines a minute is about as fast as one can easily write, merely mechanically; and to achieve this feat, Montalvan must have averaged this number every minute for nine hours, with no pause for invention or hesitation. Having finished his work, he went down to walk in the garden, and there found his brother poet Lope pruning an orange-tree. "Well, how did you get on?" said he. "Very well," answered Lope; "I rose early, at about five, and after I had finished my work I ate my breakfast; since then I have written a letter of fifty triplets, and watered the whole garden, which has tired me a good deal." What do you say to that?

Mallet. I don't believe it: I don't think merely mechanically it would be possible. This would have required him to write 9 lines a minute, and there are very few persons who can copy 5 lines, though word for word it be read out to them in that space of time. I write very fast, and it takes me that time to write 7-I have tried it.

Belton. I merely repeat the story of Montalvan : and I suppose many of the lines are very short; he may have used shorthand.

Mallett. That alone could in my belief have made it possible. Such excessive production must, however, lead to mannerism and repetition. The mind requires fallow times of leisure between its harvests. The stream finally runs shallow if too much be constantly drawn from it.

Belton. One cannot give absolute rules in such cases. Genius

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Provokes itself, and, like the current, flies Each bound it chafes."

Shallow minds fall soon into mannerism, but great minds are not to be bounded by old limits. They overflow their banks in times of fulness, and go ever on, enlarging and deepening their currents. Besides, does not one's mind strengthen as much as one's muscles by constant practice? Does not lying fallow often mean merely being idle? Does not mannerism arise rather from laziness of purpose than limitation of faculties? Of course one cannot be original to order-even to one's own order; but does doing nothing for a time help us?

Mallett. I have no doubt it does. Does it not strengthen one to sleep? Belton. I was struck the other day in reading Goethe's essay on 'Ancient and Modern,' by his deliberate confession that he likes mannerists, and is pleased with the possession of their works. He places Raffaelle above Leonardo da Vinci and Michael Angelo, and values his facility above all their great qualities. After strenuously praising the school of the Caracci, which, by almost universal consent, is placed in the second rank, and regarded as academical in its character and wanting the highest inspiration

of art, he says: "Here was a grand work of talent, earnestness, industry, and consecutive advantages. Here was an element for the natural and artistic development of admirable powers.

We see whole dozens of excellent artists produced by it, each practising and cultivating his peculiar talent according to the same general idea; so that it seems hardly possible that after-times should produce anything similar." He then proceeds to exalt Rubens and the "crowd of Dutch painters of the seventeenth century," and the "incredible sagacity with which their eye pierced into nature, and the facility with which they succeeded in expressing her legitimate charm, so as to enchant us everywhere. Nay," he continues, "in proportion as we possess the same qualities, we are willing for a time to limit ourselves exclusively to the examination and attraction of these productions, and are contented with the possession and enjoyment of this class of pictures exclusively." And then follows an elaborate analysis of a series of etchings by Sebastian Bourbon, an artist of the fifteenth century, "whose talent," he says, "has never received its due praise." This, I confess, surprised me in Goethe.

Mallet. It does not surprise me. His genius had a deliberate method of action and composition which resembled in many respects the art of the Caracci, and of even the lower school of their followers. He was essentially academic in his turn of mind; and naturally he overvalued academic and almost mechanical facility above the higher methods. and daring graspings of great genius. He had a high esteem for the Muses, and no passion for them. He shook hands in the most friendly manner with them, always was proper, sometimes condescending, to them, and never omitted the forms and ceremonies of politeness; when he called

on them he always said, "Ich empfehle mich," and bowed low. But he was never passionately in love with them-never gave his heart to them with a complete self-surrender. He did not feel with Schiller that

"Der allein besitzt die Musen,

Der sie trägt im warmen Busen,
Dem Vandalen sind sie Stein."

No; he rather put them to school, like a stiff old schoolmaster.

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with facts and observations and commonplaces. But commonplaces. Their works are tedious beyond measure. In their poetry there is, for the most part, no irradiation-no fire to fuse and transmute it from substance to spirit. "The German genius," says Matthew Arnold, in his admirable paper on the study of Celtic literature, "has steadiness with honesty," while the English has "energy with honesty." But steadiness and honesty are qualities which, admirable as they are in life and in certain forms of literature, have little relation to the imagination, save in a very exalted sense. The poetic imagination takes slight heed of honesty. It has a higher office. It fuses while it uses, and in its glow all things "Suffer a sea-change

Belton. I am sorry I introduced this subject. You are thoroughly unfair to Goethe; and though there is a certain truth in all you say, you exaggerate it until it becomes a falsity.

Mallett. I like Schiller's essays on art far better than Goethe's. There are some passages in his æsthetic letters on the education of man that are wonderfully noble, eloquent, and ideal in character; and I wish I had them here, that I might read you some. I am almost tempted to try and recall them now from memory, but I should do them injustice, and so let it be for another day, when I will bring you the book and read them to you.

Belton. You know I am fond of the Germans.

Mallett. I know you are; but I cannot see what you find so admirable in their imaginative literature, nor can I sympathise with the present rage for Germanism. In scholarship, philosophy, and criticism they stand very high, and in these branches their literature is admirable.

But in almost all their books there is an absence of literary digestion. They ransack libraries with an astonishing zeal and industry, and leave nothing to desire in the way of accumulation; but they have no power of rejection and assimilation. Everything is fish which comes to their net. A German's capacity of boring and of being bored is inexhaustible. In the higher grade of the imagination they are encumbered

Into something rich and strange." It is often absolutely dishonest to real fact, and only true to ideal feeling. Fuel becomes flame in its enthusiastic embrace. What steadiness or honesty in their common-sense is there in such lines as these ?— "Take, oh! take those lips away

That so sweetly were forsworn;
And those eyes, the break of day,

Lights that do mislead the morn." Literally this is absurd: ideally it is exquisite. There is no bane to poetry like commonplace, however true, however honest. But such graces as these are never snatched by the German muse, and she wearies us with platitudes and propositions. Even Goethe is so determined to be accurate to the fact, that in writing his Alexis and Dora he stopped to consider whether Alexis, when he takes leave of Dora, ought to put down or take up his bundle; so at least Eckermann reports from Goethe's own lips. This is purely German in its literalness.

Belton. Have you raved enough against the Germans? If so, let us go back to Sir Walter Scott, in re

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