Spanish and devoured Cervantes, whose "_novelas_," he said, "first
inspired him with the ambition to excel in fiction;" and all that he
read and admired he remembered. Scott used to illustrate the
capricious affinity of his own memory for what suited it, and its
complete rejection of what did not, by old Beattie of Meikledale's
answer to a Scotch divine, who complimented him on the strength of his
memory. "No, sir," said the old Borderer, "I have no command of my
memory. It only retains what hits my fancy; and probably, sir, if you
were to preach to me for two hours, I would not be able, when you
finished, to remember a word you had been saying." Such a memory, when
it belongs to a man of genius, is really a sieve of the most valuable
kind. It sifts away what is foreign and alien to his genius, and
assimilates what is suited to it. In his very last days, when he was
visiting Italy for the first time, Scott delighted in Malta, for it
recalled to him Vertot's _Knights of Malta_, and much, other mediæval
story which he had pored over in his youth. But when his friends
descanted to him at Pozzuoli on the Thermæ--commonly called the Temple
of Serapis--among the ruins of which he stood, he only remarked that
he would believe whatever he was told, "for many of his friends, and
particularly Mr. Morritt, had frequently tried to drive classical
antiquities, as they are called, into his head, but they had always
found his skull too thick." Was it not perhaps some deep literary
instinct, like that here indicated, which made him, as a lad, refuse
so steadily to learn Greek, and try to prove to his indignant
professor that Ariosto was superior to Homer? Scott afterwards deeply
regretted this neglect of Greek; but I cannot help thinking that his
regret was misplaced. Greek literature would have brought before his
mind standards of poetry and art which could not but have both deeply
impressed and greatly daunted an intellect of so much power; I say
both impressed and daunted, because I believe that Scott himself would