Volume 17, Number 3 · September 2, 1971
The Too Well Known
By David Craig
Sir Walter Scott: The Great Unknown
by Edgar Johnson
Macmillan, 1,397 pp., $25.00
This life of Scott owes both its usefulness and its faults to its main characteristic: it has been intensively, even completely, researched. If there were, shall we say, 27,463 facts available about Scott, then Professor Johnson must have recorded a good 27,000 of them. If Scott went to dinner, we learn what meats and wines were served, what other notables were there, when he had last met them, which of his cousins were married to them, what jokes he told, and how he felt the morning after. We learn what books he bought, what paths he walked along, how often he was bled (by applying leeches), the names of his visitors and how they had come (by stagecoach or packet boat, by bridge or ferry), the mementos he was given, and above all the money he earned, invested, paid out, borrowed, lost, or gave. The questions I find it natural to raise are: Is the value of the work proportionate to its bulk? Is the residue it leaves in the mind proportionate to the time it takes to read it? And does it define truly the significance, whether in his day or for us, of Scott's life and works?
Review, 2398 words
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