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the placid flood and flow of his own dilutions, ceases from being
artificial, and is for a time, long or short, recognizably sincere and
in earnest?
1
0. Did he know how to write English, and didn't do it because he didn't
want to?
1
1. Did he use the right word only when he couldn't think of another
one, or did he run so much to wrong because he didn't know the right one
when he saw it?
1
3. Can you read him? and keep your respect for him? Of course a person
could in his day--an era of sentimentality and sloppy romantics--but
land! can a body do it today?
Brander, I lie here dying, slowly dying, under the blight of Sir Walter.
I have read the first volume of Rob Roy, and as far as chapter XIX
of Guy Mannering, and I can no longer hold my head up nor take my
nourishment. Lord, it's all so juvenile! so artificial, so shoddy;
and such wax figures and skeletons and spectres. Interest? Why, it
is impossible to feel an interest in these bloodless shams, these
milk-and-water humbugs. And oh, the poverty of the invention! Not
poverty in inventing situations, but poverty in furnishing reasons
for them. Sir Walter usually gives himself away when he arranges for a
situation--elaborates, and elaborates, and elaborates, till if you live
to get to it you don't believe in it when it happens.
1089
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