quite correct as it stood, and, if the two processes by which the writer was correcting verbal errors and following the sense of the passage had been really continuous processes of thought, unquestionably the passage would have been left alone. If the passage had been erroneous and had been simply left in that condition, the case would have been one only too familiar to those who have had occasion to correct proofs. But what the writer actually did was deliberately to make nonsense of the passage while improving the balance of the second sentence. He made it run, "The first is less than the second, but the square of the first is plainly greater than the square of the second," the absurdity of which statement a child would detect. If the first proof in its correct form, with the incorrect correction carefully written down in the margin, had not existed, when, several months later, the error was pointed out in the "Quarterly Journal of Science," the writer would have felt sure that he had written the words wrongly at the outset. For blunders such as this are common enough. But, that he should deliberately have taken a correctly worded sentence and altered it into utter absurdity, he could not, but for the evidence, have believed to be possible. The case plainly shows that not only may two things be done at once, when the mind, nevertheless, is thinking only of one, but that something may be done which suggests deliberate reflection, when in reality the mind is elsewhere or not occupied at all. For in this case both the processes on which the writer was engaged were manifestly carried on without thought, one being purely mechanical, and the other, though requiring thought if properly attended to, being so imperfectly effected as to show that no thought was given to it.
To return to Sir Walter Scott. It is known but too well that during the later years of his life there came with bodily prostration a great but not constant failure of his mental powers. Some of the phenomena presented during this part of his career are strikingly illustrative of abnormal mental action occurring even at times when the mental power is on the whole much weakened. "The Bride of Lammermoor," though not one of the best of Scott's novels, is certainly far above such works as "Count Robert of Paris," "The Betrothed," and "Castle Dangerous." Its popularity may perhaps be attributed chiefly to the deep interest of the "ower true tale" on which it is founded; but some of the characters are painted with exceeding skill. Lucy herself is almost a nonentity, and Edgar is little more than a gloomy, unpleasant man, made interesting only by the troubles which fall on him. But Ailsie Gourlay and Caleb Balderstone stand out from the canvas as if alive; they are as lifelike and natural, yet as thoroughly individualized, as Edie Ochiltree and Meg Merrilies. The novel neither suggested when it first appeared, nor has been regarded even after the facts became known, as suggesting that Scott, when he wrote it, was in ill health. Yet it was produced under pressure of severe illness, and when Scott was at least in this sense unconscious, that nothing of what he said and did in connection with
