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.