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NOTICES OF BOOKS. 133
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
Contempoeaey Germain" Iiitera.Tuhe No. I...
It was not so with Scott . His genius was In no wise influenced by the events of his life or by his personal sympathies and antipathies . He
dreamt his dreams and picked up his treasures in the enchanted land of his own fancy , appearing * before the world in the full
plenitude of his powers . Hence his first poem was as much a masteriece as any that followed It , whilst his first novel , " Waverley , "
p made the reputation of its author at once . Dr . Eberty speculates , wonderingly on the causes of his success .
" The artist / ' It has been said , " belongs to his work , and not the work to the artist . " In Scott ' s case this was literally true . When he
wished to write well , he was led by his subject and could never attempt to be the driver . He did not choose the themes for his
poetry and fiction , but they chose him . Far different is Edgar Poe ' s explanation of the deliberate manner in which he wrote his " Raven ; "
selecting the intervals of sound , and weighing the principles of llabic effect with mathematical precision . Scotton the contrary ,
could sy not sit down to writetill the music of his subject , had entered Into his innermost being , , till his pen moved , as it were , by its
own will , and he felt that no single passage could have been worded differently . The contrast is curious and suggestive . "We may play
with _Fancjr , - \ ve can coax her like a wayward pet child and make her go where we list ; but we must look up to Imagination and
follow in her steps . It Is in keeping with the poet ' s character that Dr . Eberty remarks
the likeness in Scott ' s writing to a series of paintings or shifting dissolving views . It is difficult to draw the line between poetry
and painting . We make pictures out of poetry , and evoke poetry from ictures . The true artist must be a poet by nature , that he
may be p able to seize the soul of every scene and discern its sentiment . And Scott , in his healthy appreciation of landscape scenery ,
was a master in the art . Earth is no longer one vast Paradise , but the ots of real beauty are few and far between , reserved in
ciate secret them for sp those . Jean whose Paul eyes divides can select the lovers , and of whose nature hearts into two can classes appre- .
There are those who merely see nature with the eyes of the conventional landscape painter , cutting , pruning , and adding according to
conventional rules , or as they think proper to improve upon it ; but there are others who have a reverent eye for beauty , who " in this
world of ours see the germ of a second yet more fair , who recreate from creationandmid the rustling of earth ' s myriad treesbend humbly
in adoration , , feeling themselves as weak as the most frag , ile leaves ;" who look , the temple of Nature not as an exhibition of statues
upon with and p the ictures heart , but and as not a kin onl g y dom with of the lig eyes ht and . Let life us — hope in short that , this who is see a
class which is , daily increasing amongst us . In his love for natural beauties Scott was worthily succeeded by Wordsworth and Tennyson ,
who were yet more successful exponents of hidden beauty in visible
things , and yet equally the priests of human love . We will not
Notices Of Books. 133
NOTICES OF BOOKS . 133
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Citation
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English Woman’s Journal (1858-1864), April 1, 1862, page 133, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/ewj/issues/ewj_01041862/page/61/
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