he spray dashing about him. As we rode back to Musselburgh, he often
came and placed himself beside me, to repeat the verses that he had been
composing during these pauses of our exercise."

In after years, Mr. Cadell, then a guest at Abbotsford, observing how
his host was harassed by lion-hunters, and what a number of hours he
spent daily in the company of his work-people, expressed his wonder that
Scott should ever be able to work at all while in the country. "Oh,"
said Sir Walter, "I lie simmering over things for an hour or so before I
get up; and there's the time I'm dressing to overhaul my half-sleeping,
half-waking _projet de chapitre_, and when I get the paper before me, it
commonly runs off pretty easily. Besides, I often take a doze in the
plantations, and while Tom [Purdie] marks out a dyke or a drain as I
have directed, one's fancy may be running its ain rigs in some other
world."

By far the greater portion of "The Bride of Lammermoor," the whole of
"The Legend of Montrose," and almost the whole of "Ivanhoe" were
dictated under the terrible stimulus of physical pain, which wrung
groans from the author between the words. The very two novels wherein
the creative power of the arch-master of romance shows itself most
strongly were composed in the midst of literal birth-throes. Laidlaw
would often beseech Sir Walter affectionately to stop dictating, when
his audible suffering filled every pause. It was then he made that
grimmest of all bad puns: "Nay, Willie," addressing Laidlaw, who wrote
for him and implored him to rest, "only see that the doors are fast. I
would fain keep all the cry, as well as all the wool, to ourselves; but
as to giving over work, that can be done only when I am in woollen."
John Ballantyne, his other faithful amanuensis, after the first day,
took care to have always a dozen of pens made before he seated himself
opposite the sofa on which Scott lay, the sufferer usually continuing
his sentence in the same breath, though he often turned himself on his
pillow with a groan of anguish. "But when a dialogue of peculiar
animation was in progress, spirit seemed to triumph altogether over
matter: he arose from his couch and walked up and down the room, raising
and lowering his voice, and, as it were, acting the parts."

In this last particular we are reminded of the celebrated Russian
author, Gogol, whose practice it is said to have been in composing a
dialogue to recite all the different speeche