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Untitled Article
to excite the curiosity , but to keep it in a constant state of excitement until you think proper to satisfy it with the catastrophe ; but no one has "known how to use this powerful engine with such skill as Sir Walter Scott . * There is never any tediousness in his chapters , except , perhaps , in some opening ones , where he enters by stealth into the dominion of history . But when he ranges without restraint the azure space of the ideal , he is a despot , a tyrant who drags you along in spite of
yourself ; he is like Destiny : " volentes ducit , nolentes trahit . ' His dialogue , so animated and natural , is in fact exactly the rhythm of the Terzina , with all its artificial gradations . He carries it to an extreme , like Rossini frequently , and , like Rossini , frequently scatters roses and carnations , where the syntax of the heart would but require some pale jessamine . " This likewise , "
some say , " is a great defect . " Perhaps it may be , if you judge of it coldly by rules deduced from , Aristotle's Treatises ; that is , if , bringing into a system the feelings of the heart , you establish that it is proper , whenever you speak of one who is dead , to draw up from the depths of your chest a tremendous groan , and exclaim in a voice quite hoarse and choked with anguish , " requiescat in pace . " But very often the tiling is really quite different in
practice ; it grieves me to say ( and perchance some one may take occasion from it to pronounce me more wicked than I am ) that except in a few cases , as every one knows , the chords of the heart are never in fact stretched to a very extraordinary degree ; and when they are , refreshment of some sort oozes in from many quarters , which soon softens the grief , and brings back tranquillity if not joy . It may be all very laudable , that unlimited confidence in the fidelity , innocence , friendship , and grief of relations and domestics—in short , in the whole catalogue of virtuous qualities . Heaven forbid that I should break a prism of such enchanting
colours ! But it is a dream of the golden wings of early youth ; and let him who has arrived at manhood say , whether he has not sometimes in " sad experience seen it dissipated . " My conclusion then is , that although Walter Scott may perchance occasionally offend , like one dancing in a cemetery , yet he does but too certainly paint human nature as in truth it exists . Ideal perfection is more than rare . Sir Charles Grandison , and Clarissa Harlowe , lived only in Richardson ' s imagination ; and according to my opinion , in order to produce a brilliant effect , without going
into exaggeration , it is necessary , in the present day at least , to abandon perfectibility , and to draw men with their vices , which are many , with their weaknesses which are still more numerous , and with their few virtues , which , although in such a small quan-• AH dramatic writers being out of thu question , we presume ? But other novelists hare known aa well as Scott , though they may not have had such extensive practice . —Kd .
Untitled Article
562 Rossini and Walter Scot I .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Sept. 2, 1836, page 562, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2661/page/38/
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