He is behind the
person he has made, moving his arms, looking through his eyes,
breathing through his mouth; and just as life itself is hurried and
inconsequent, so the perfection of art is, not to be hurried and
inconsequent, but to give one the impression of being so. I don't
believe he left his work uncorrected out of mere impatience. Look
at the way he wrote when he was writing in a different manner--look
at the Sonnets, for instance--there is plenty of calculated art
there!"
"Yes," I said, "there is art there, but I don't think it is very
deliberate art. I don't believe they were written SLOWLY. Of course
one can hardly be breathless in a sonnet. The rhymes are all
stretched across the ground, like wires, and one has to pick one's
way among them."
"Well, take another instance," said Musgrave. "Look at Scott. He
speaks himself of his 'hurried frankness of execution.' His proof-
sheets are the most extraordinary things, full of impossible
sentences, lapses of grammar, and so forth. He did not do much
correcting himself, but I believe I am right in saying that his
publishers did, and spent hours in reducing the chaos to order.
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