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Untitled Article
itbet > f otpofs material or mental , he has , probably , never been surpassed . His delineations are never either on the One hand the creations of his own phantasy , or , on the other , a mere catalogue of uncombined particulars . Our notion of his intellectual rank \ is , that he occupied a niidway station between the man of memory ^ who merely reproduces what he found as he found it ; and the man of poetical imagination , or of creative power . It is true that imagination must derive its materials from actual existence ;
but the combination is original : the parts may be , but the whole is not , a re-production . It is no disparagement of Scott to say , that to this < c highest heaven of invention" he never ascended . Many a character which Shakspeare drew was an original : every character which Scott drew had an original . But if he could not create like Shakspeare , he was only second to Shakspeare for presenting the vivid portraiture of what nature had created . The temples which he restored from materials that , in other
hands , would have been only isolated , scattered , and shapeless fragments , shewed not unworthy their original architect . He was an admirable renovator . It was beyond him to mould the form of a Pandora , but he had power to re-aniraate the mummy of a CheOps .
From the first ( as it will be to the last ) one great charm of Scott ' s poems and novels was the distinctness and completeness of the descriptions of natural scenery with which they abound . The fidelity with which he delineated the individual objects or features of a landscape was always subservient to the communication of the impression or emotion which it excited as a whole . The recollection of two literary landscape painters of the last generation may serve to illustrate what we take to bfe the singular felicity of his delineations . Botk Mrs . Radcliffe and Cowper were
at one titne celebrated for their scenery . The defect of the one was the absence of distinct detail , and that of the other , the want of an entire and general impression . There is a dreamy beauty about Mrs . Radcliflfe ' s forests , with their Waving and wide-spreaditig foliage in the golden lights and deep shadows of autumnal sunsets ; but it is all unreal , intangible , incapable of being painted or identified ; her descriptions of Udolpho were only the " mysteries " of Udolpho , and all her tree painting only made the ' romance of a Forest / She aimed at general effect , but missed it for want of
truth , precision , accuracy of detail . Cowper fell into the opposite eittreme ; he is definite enough in minutiae , but the spirit which should ptervade the whole , the conception or taking together the several objects so as to realize the entire scene , the combination of each separate material and effect into a single impression ; this is Very much wanting in his descriptions . Their perfection is that of an auctioneer ^ catalogue or bailiff ' s inventory : item , one hill of a conical form ; stream , thirty feet wide , meandering in an ih-fcgular CiirVe ; fifty trees , vlfc ., twelve oakfc , eighteen beeches ,
Untitled Article
? $ & a On the Intellectual Character
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Nov. 2, 1832, page 722, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1824/page/2/
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