In "Waverley" these emendations are very rare,
and are unimportant. A few callidae juncturae are added, a very few lines
are deleted. The postscript of the first edition did not contain the
anecdote about the hiding-place of the manuscript among the fishing
tackle. The first line of Flora Macdonald's battle-song (chapter xxii.)
originally ran, "Mist darkens the mountain, night darkens the vale," in
place of "There is mist on the mountain and mist on the vale." For the
rest, as Scott says, "where the tree falls it must lie."]
As long as he was understood, he was almost reckless of well-constructed
sentences, of the one best word for his meaning, of rounded periods. This
indifference is not to be praised, but it is only a proof of his
greatness that his style, never distinguished, and often lax, has not
impaired the vitality of his prose. The heart which beats in his works,
the knowledge of human nature, the dramatic vigour of his character, the
nobility of his whole being win the day against the looseness of his
manner, the negligence of his composition, against the haste of fatigue
which set him, as Lady Louisa Stuart often told him, on "huddling up a
conclusion anyhow, and so kicking the book out of his way.
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