He intended to admit "no word or turn of phraseology betraying an origin directly modern,"[434] but to avoid obsolete words for the most part; and he never attempted to follow with fidelity the style of the exact age of which he was writing.

The translation of Froissart by Lord Berners seemed to him a sufficiently good model to serve for the whole mediaeval period.[435] In his review of _Tales of My Landlord_ he says of the proem to his book: "It is written in the quaint style of that prefixed by Gay to his _Pastorals_, being, as Johnson terms it, 'such imitation as he could obtain of obsolete language, and by consequence, in a style that was never written or spoken in any age or place.'" His _Journal_ contains observations on several historical novels which were of little consequence, as, for example, on one by a Mr.Bell,--"He goes not the way to write it; he is too general, and not sufficiently minute";[436] and on _The Spae-Wife_, by Galt,--"He has made his story difficult to understand, by adopting a region of history little known."[437] On the other hand he remarked, when someone had suggested a number of historical subjects to him,--"People will not consider that a thing may already be so well told in history, that romance ought not in prudence to meddle with it";[438] and at another time he spoke of "the usual habit of antiquarians," to "neglect what is useful for things that are merely curious."[439] Aside from the familiar knowledge of ancient manners which he thought enabled him to give his tales the necessary touch of novelty, and from the "hurried frankness," or spontaneity of style which endowed them with vitality, Scott believed that his talents included a special knack at description.

He felt, however, that a sense of the picturesque in action was a different thing from a similar perception in regard to scenery, and that though the first was natural to him, he was obliged to use effort to develop the second.[440] Some study of drawing in his youth helped him to comprehend the demands of perspective, and he endeavored to carry out the principle of describing a scene in the way in which it would naturally strike the spectator, neither overloading with confused detail nor over-emphasizing what should be subordinate.[441] That his plan was consciously adopted may be seen from his discussion of Byron's skill in description and from his comments on the descriptive passages of the mediaeval romances.[442] At the same time he understood the advantages of the realistic method.
On one occasion he stated as his creed, "that in nature herself no two scenes were exactly alike, and that whoever copied truly what was before his eyes would possess the same variety in his descriptions, and exhibit apparently an imagination as boundless as the range of nature in the scenes he recorded; whereas, whoever trusted to imagination would soon find his own mind circumscribed and contracted to a few favourite images, and the repetition of these would sooner or later produce that very monotony and barrenness which had always haunted descriptive poetry in the hands of any but the patient worshippers of truth."[443] Wordsworth disapproved of Scott's method in description.

He is quoted as having said: "Nature does not permit an inventory to be made of her charms! He should have left his pencil and note-book at home [and] fixed his eye as he walked with a reverent attention on all that surrounded him."[444] Somewhat like a rejoinder sounds another remark of Scott's, in phrases that Wordsworth would have detested.

Scott said cheerfully, "As to the actual study of nature, if you mean the landscape gardening of poetry ...