Guy Mannering or The Astrologer

shall also be sanctioned so far as the Author may be entitled to do so. I think the facetious Joe Miller records a case pretty much in point; where the keeper of a museum, while showing, as he said, the very sword with which Balaam was about to kill his ass, was interrupted by one of the visitors, who reminded him that Balaam was not possessed of a sword, but only wished for one. 'True, sir,' replied the ready-witted cicerone; 'but this is the very sword he wished for.' The Author, in application of this story, has only to add that, though ignorant of the coincidence between the fictions of the tale and some real circumstances, he is contented to believe he must unconsciously have thought or dreamed of the last while engaged in the composition of Guy Mannering. 

EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION TO GUY MANNERING.

The second essay in fiction of an author who has triumphed in his first romance is a doubtful and perilous adventure. The writer is apt to become self-conscious, to remember the advice of his critics,―a fatal error,―and to tremble before the shadow of his own success. He knows that he will have many enemies, that hundreds of people will be ready to find fault and to vow that he is "written out." Scott was not unacquainted with these apprehensions. After publishing "Marmion" he wrote thus to Lady Abercorn:―

"No one acquires a certain degree of popularity without exciting an equal degree of malevolence among those who, either from rivalship or from the mere wish to pull down what others have set up, are always ready to catch the first occasion to lower the favoured individual to what they call his 'real standard.' Of this I have enough of experience, and my political interferences, however useless to my friends, have not failed to make me more than the usual number of enemies. I am therefore bound, in justice to myself and to those whose good opinion has hitherto protected me, not to peril myself too frequently. The naturalists tell us that if you destroy the web which the spider has just made, the insect must spend many days in inactivity till he has assembled within his person the materials necessary to weave another. Now, after writing a work of imagination one feels in nearly the same exhausted state as the spider. I believe no man now alive writes more rapidly than I do (no great recommendation); but I never think of making verses till I have a sufficient stock of poetical ideas to supply them,―I would as soon join the Israelites in Egypt in their heavy task of making bricks without clay. Besides, I know, as a small farmer, that good husbandry consists in not taking the same crop too frequently from the same soil; and as turnips come after wheat, according to the best rules of agriculture, I take it that an edition of Swift will do well after such a scourging crop as 'Marmiou.'"

[March 13, 1808. Copied from the Collection of Lady Napier and Ettrick.]

These fears of the brave, then, were not unfamiliar to Scott; but he audaciously disregarded all of them in the composition of "Guy Mannering." He had just spun his web, like the spider of his simile, he had just taken off his intellectual fields the "scourging crop" of "The Lord of the Isles," he had just received the discouraging news of its comparative failure, when he "buckled to," achieved "Guy Mannering" in six weeks, and published it. Moliere tells us that he wrote "Les Facheux" in a fortnight; and a French critic adds that it reads indeed as if it had been written in, a fortnight. Perhaps a self-confident censor might venture a similar opinion about "Guy Mannering." It assuredly shows traces of haste; the plot wanders at its own will; and we may believe that the Author often―did not see his own way out of the wood. But there is little harm in that. "If I do not know what is coming next," a modern novelist has remarked, "how can the public know?" Curiosity, at least, is likely to be excited by this happy-go-lucky manner of Scott's. "The worst of it is;" as he wrote to Lady Abercorn about his poems (June 9,1808), "that I am not very good or patient in slow and careful composition; and sometimes I remind myself of the drunken man, who could run long after he could not walk." Scott could certainly run very well, though averse to a plodding motion.

[He was probably thinking of a famous Edinburgh character, "Singing Jamie Balfour." Jamie was found very drunk and adhering to the pavement one night. He could not raise himself; but when helped to his feet, ran his preserver a race to the tavern, and won!]