FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   106   107   108   109   110   111   112   113   114   115   116   117   118   119   120   >>  
her power,' is dead. We shall never get anybody outside the necessarily small number of those who have cultivated the historic as well as the aesthetic sense in literature, to read him except as a curiosity or a task, because he not merely cultivated art, but neglected nature for it; because he fooled the time to the top of its bent, and let the time fool him in return; because, instead of making the common as though it were not common, he aimed and strained at the uncommon _in_ and _per se_. Scott did just the contrary. He never tried to be unlike somebody else; if he hit, as he did hit, upon great new styles of literature,--absolutely new in the case of the historical novel, revived after long trance in the case of the verse tale,--it was from no desire to innovate, but because his genius called him. Though in ordinary ways he was very much a man of his time, he did not contort himself in any fashion by way of expressing a (then) modern spirit, a Georgian idiosyncrasy, or anything of that sort; he was content with the language of the best writers and the thoughts of the best men. He was no amateur of the topsy-turvy, and had not the very slightest desire to show how a literary head could grow beneath the shoulders. He was satisfied that his genius should flow naturally. And the consequence is that it was never checked, that it flows still for us with all its spontaneous charm, and that it will flow _in omne volubilis aevum_. Among many instances of the strength which accompanied this absence of strain one already alluded to may be mentioned again. Scott is one of the most literary of all writers. He was saturated with reading; nothing could happen but it brought some felicitous quotation, some quaint parallel to his mind from the great wits, or the small, of old. Yet no writer is less _bookish_ than he; none insults his readers less with any parade, with any apparent consciousness of erudition; and he wears his learning so lightly that pedants have even accused him of lacking it because he lacks pedantry. His stream, to resume the simile, carries in solution more reading as well as more wit, more knowledge of life and nature, more gifts of almost all kinds than would suffice for twenty men of letters, yet the very power of its solvent force, as well as the vigour of its current, makes these things comparatively invisible. In dealing with an author so voluminous and so various in his kinds and subjects of compositio
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   106   107   108   109   110   111   112   113   114   115   116   117   118   119   120   >>  



Top keywords:

common

 

reading

 
writers
 
cultivated
 

literary

 
literature
 

desire

 
nature
 
genius
 

spontaneous


felicitous
 
quaint
 

parallel

 

quotation

 
absence
 

strain

 
volubilis
 

strength

 

accompanied

 

saturated


happen

 

instances

 

mentioned

 

alluded

 

brought

 

pedants

 

solvent

 

vigour

 
current
 

letters


twenty

 
suffice
 

voluminous

 

author

 

subjects

 

compositio

 

dealing

 

things

 

comparatively

 

invisible


knowledge

 

erudition

 

consciousness

 

learning

 

lightly

 
apparent
 
parade
 

bookish

 

insults

 

readers