life, they are studies, the 'prentice work of his learning hand, and they disclose successively the varieties and modes of his growth, which was one of slow and almost imperceptible gradations, until his method was fully formed, perhaps unconsciously, and became the artistic mould of his genius. In his first attempts there was little, if anything, more than in the instinctive motions of a bird's wings,—the disposition for flight. He had the faculty of literary expression, which had been nourished within and outwardly shaped in manner by constant contact with the English classic authors, and especially with good prose, clear, simple, and direct, from which melodious cadence had not yet been eliminated. He was touched, also, by some vague literary ambition, not well defined, but predisposed to fiction; and he had a physically indolent habit, which kept him disengaged from practical affairs and led him more and more into meditative ways. He did not have any inspiration from within, any enthusiasm of sympathy or purpose, any life of his own, seeking expression; nor did he find easily a definite subject outside himself to observe, describe, and animate. He turned, in his early tales, to the local traditions and memories of his native place, and his stories were no more than sketched history, provincial in atmosphere; nor did his genius show even faintly in them any of its characteristic lines. Scott, undoubtedly, was the author who had most affected his mental habit, and with this exception, notwithstanding
