Page:The Poetical Works of William Motherwell, 1849.djvu/76

 ,' for example, there exist at least two rough draughts, if not more, in which this process of elaboration is very distinct, and out of which the poem as it now stands was wrought. There are, of course, different versions of particular stanzas, but the leading ideas and images are the same in all; and as he was thirty-four years of age when he published the ballad in its present form, we thus see that this single production was, in a certain sense, the work of a life.

In his habits of study he was necessarily desultory. No one who is engaged in the active business of the world can be otherwise; but except in that particular and somewhat narrow department of literature for which he had contracted so strong a partiality in early life, it cannot be said of Motherwell that he was a 'well-read' man. With physical science he was but slightly acquainted, and he had neglected general history, including even that of his own country, to an extraordinary degree. From some peculiarity of temperament which is not easily explained he preferred such writers as Holinshed and Stowe to Hume and Hallam; and the only modern historical work of any note that I ever recollect to have heard him speak of, was Sharon Turner's History of the Anglo-Saxons. He had likewise a strong distaste to what is commonly called