The Henson Journals

[59]

Wednesday, December 27th, 1922.

[symbol]

I finished reading through Bishop Hick's Life . He was a paradoxical person, hard to bring under any single and recognized description. It is evident that he was able to accept the party shibboleths – political and social – to an extent which in the case of a man so independent and intellectually able is very astonishing.

Kathleen sent me a copy of "Letters & Recollections of Sir Walter Scott" by Mrs Hughes. I found it full of curious interest. Scott did not scruple to deny flatly that he was the Author of the Novels:

I really assure you I am not the author of the novels which the world ascribe to me so pertinaciously. If I were, what good reason should I have for concealing, being such a hackneyed scribbler as I am?

This was written on May 16th 1823. Can this falsehood be defended? It is difficult to see how an author, desiring to preserve anonymity could secure his object against direct interrogation except by saying a lie: and the end being unquestionably legitimate, it is hard to refuse legitimacy to the indispensable means. Yet there is something repugnant about such deliberate and categorical mendacity. Scott's familiarity with the conventional lying of the law–courts may have assisted him in the solution of the casuistical problem which he allowed himself to adopt. The problem must be allowed to be genuine enough.

---