Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 8.djvu/335

Rh solution gives us an insight into his own literary character, and shows us how he was himself able to write so many volumes:— "I have taken the trouble," he says, ' to make a computation, which I think fair to give, whichever way it may be thought to make in the argument. In each page of 'Kenilworth' there are, upon an average, 864 letters; in each page of this journal 777 letters. Now I find that in ten days I have written 120 pages, which would make about 108 pages of 'Kenilworth; and as there are 320 pages in a volume, it would, at my rate of writing this journal, cost about 29| days for each volume, or say three months for the composition of the whole of that work. No mortal in Abbotsford House ever learned that I kept a journal. I was in company all day, and all the evening till a late hour, apparently the least occupied of the party; and, I will venture to say, not absent from the drawing-room one-quarter of the time that the Unknown was. I was always down to breakfast before any one else, and often three-quarters of an hour before the author of 'Kenilworth;' always among the very last to go to bed; in short, I would have set the acutest observer at defiance to have discovered when I wrote this journal; and yet it is written, honestly and fairly, day by day. I don't say it has cost me much labour, but it is surely not too much to suppose that its composition has cost me, an unpractised writer, as much study as 'Kenilworth' has cost the glorious Unknown. I have not had the motive of £5500 to spur me on for my set of volumes; but if I had had such a bribe, in addition to the feelings of good-will for those at home, for whose sole perusal I write this, and if I had had in view, over and above, the literary glory of contributing to the happiness of two thirds of the globe, do you think I would not have written ten times as much, and yet no one should have been able to discover when it was that I had put pen to paper?" All this is well; but alas for the man, however talented and however active, who tasks his mind like a machine or a steam-engine, and calculates that, according to the ratio of a few days or weeks, it may be made to go onward, without interval, for months, for years, for a whole lifetime! Both Scott and Hall tried the experiment, and we know how mournfully it ended. While mentioning these two in connection, it may be as well to state that the acquaintanceship which they enjoyed during these bright but brief festal meetings at Abbotsford, was not interrupted, but rather drawn more closely, by the distressing events that clouded the latter years of Sir Walter. Such was the case especially in 1826, when, after making a visit to Scott's now humble residence in North St. David Street (Edinburgh), with the veneration of a pilgrim, Hall thus prefaced his account of the interview in his journal upon his returning home:— "A hundred and fifty years hence, when his works have become old classical authorities, it may interest some fervent lover of his writings to know what this great genius was about on Saturday, the 10th of June, 1826, five months after the total ruin of his pecuniary fortunes, and twenty-six days after the death of his wife." When Scott's health was so utterly broken down that a voyage to Naples, and a winter's residence there, were prescribed as a last resource, Captain Hall, unknown to his friend, and prompted by his own kind heart, applied on this occasion to Sir James Graham, first Lord of the Admiralty, and suggested how fit and graceful an act it would be on the part of government to place a frigate at Scott's disposal for his voyage to the Mediterranean. The application was successful; and Sir Walter, amidst the pleasure he felt at such a distinction, could not help exclaiming of Hall, "That curious fellow, who takes charge of every one's business without neglecting his own, has done a great deal for me in