Such is Scott’s reply, in anticipation, to the censure of Carlyle, that he has not a message, and a mission, and so forth. His mission was to add enormously to human happiness: his message was that of honour, courage, endurance, love, and kindness. The Captain, however, doubts not that the new book needs an apology, and that the story “is hastily huddled up,”—a favourite criticism of Scott’s friend, Lady Louisa Steuart. Scott might have replied that his romances are not so hastily “huddled up” at the close as many of Shakespeare’s plays.
THE NOVELS
But it is curious that Hogg represents Scott as criticising his tales exactly as Captain Clutterbuck and Lady Louisa censured Scott’s own romances.
“Well, Mr. Hogg, I have read over your proofs with a great deal of pleasure, and, I confess, with some little portion of dread. In the first place, the meeting of the two princesses at Castle Weiry is excellent. I have not seen any modern thing more truly dramatic. The characters are strongly marked, old Peter Chisholme’s in particular. Ah! man, what you might have made of that with a little more refinement, care, and patience! But it is always the same with you, just hurrying on from one vagary to another, without consistency or proper arrangement.”
“Dear Mr. Scott, a man canna do the thing that he canna do.”
“Yes, but you can do it. Witness your poems, where the arrangements are all perfect and complete; but in your prose works, with the exception of a few short tales, you seem to write merely by random, without once considering what you are going to write about.”
“You are not often wrong, Mr. Scott, and you were never righter in your life than you are now, for when I write the first line of a tale or novel, I know not what the second is to be, and it is the same way in every sentence throughout. When my tale is traditionary, the work is easy, as I then see my way before me, though the tradition be ever so short, but in all my prose works of imagination, knowing little of the world, I sail on without star or compass.”
In the conversation with the Captain, Scott presently shows that, as regards composition, the Sheriff and the Shepherd sailed in the same rudderless boat. “You should take time at least to arrange your story,” says the Captain. Scott replies, as Hogg replied to himself, that “A man canna do what he canna do.”
“That is a sore point with me, my son. Believe me, I have not been fool enough to neglect ordinary precautions. I have repeatedly laid down my future work to scale, divided it into volumes and chapters, and endeavoured to construct a story which I meant would evolve itself gradually and strikingly, maintain suspense, and stimulate curiosity; and which, finally, should terminate in a striking catastrophe. But I think there is a demon who seats himself on the feather of my pen when I begin to write, and leads it astray from the purpose. Characters expand under my hand; incidents are multiplied; the story lingers, while the materials increase; my regular mansion turns out a Gothic anomaly, and the work is closed long before I have attained the point I proposed.
THE NOVELS