When I entered the room, Lord Byron was devouring, as he called it, a new novel of Sir Walter Scott’s.
“How difficult it is,” said he, “to say any thing new! Who was that voluptuary of antiquity, who offered a reward for a new pleasure? Perhaps all nature and art could not supply a new idea.
“This page, for instance, is a brilliant one; it is full of wit. But let us see how much of it is original. This passage, for instance, comes from Shakspeare; this bon mot from one of Sheridan’s Comedies; this observation from another writer (naming the author); and yet the ideas are new-moulded,—and perhaps Scott was not aware of their being plagiarisms. It is a bad thing to have too good a memory.”
“I should not like to have you for a critic,” I observed.
“‘Set a thief to catch a thief,’” was the reply.
“I never travel without Scott’s Novels,” said he: “they are a library in themselves—a perfect literary treasure. I could read them once a-year with new pleasure.”
