That which remained--the picture surviving in his mind--would have presented the ideal and essential truth of the scene, and done so, in a large part, by discarding much which, though in itself striking, was not characteristic.

In every scene many of the most brilliant details are but accidental.

A true eye for Nature does not note them, or at least does not dwell on them.' On the same occasion he remarked, 'Scott misquoted in one of his novels my lines on _Yarrow_.

He makes me write, "The swans on sweet St.Mary's lake Float double, swans and shadow;" but I wrote "The _swan_ on _still_ St.Mary's lake." Never could I have written "swans" in the plural.

The scene when I saw it, with its still and dim lake, under the dusky hills, was one of utter loneliness: there was _one_ swan, and one only, stemming the water, and the pathetic loneliness of the region gave importance to the one companion of that swan, its own white image in the water.