Sir Walter Scott, in a letter to Miss Johanna Baillie, dated October 12,
1825, (Lockhart's _Life of Sir W. S._, vol. vi. p. 82.), says,--
"I well intended to have written from Ireland, but alas! as some
stern old divine says, 'Hell is paved with good intentions.'
There was such a whirl of laking, and boating, and wondering,
and shouting, and laughing, and carousing--" [He alludes to his
visiting among the Westmoreland and Cumberland lakes on his way
home, especially] "so much to be seen, and so little time to see
it; so much to be heard, and only two ears to listen to twenty
voices, that upon the whole I grew desperate, and gave up all
thoughts of doing what was right and proper on post-days, and so
all my epistolary good intentions are gone to Macadamise, I
suppose, 'the burning marle' of the infernal regions."
How easily a showy absurdity is substituted for a serious truth, and
taken for granted to be the right sense. Without having been there, I
may venture to affirm that "Hell is _not_ paved with good intentions,
such things being _all lost or dropt on the way_ by travellers who reach
that bourne;" for, where "Hope never comes," "good intentions" cannot
exist any more than they can be formed, since to fulfil them were
impossible. The authentic and emphatical figure in the saying is, "The
_road_ to hell is paved with good intentions;" and it was uttered by the
"stern old divine," whoever he might be, as a warning _not_ to let "good
intentions" miscarry for want of being realized at the time and upon the
spot. The moral, moreover, is manifestly this, that people may be going
to hell with "the best intentions in the world," substituting all the
while _well-meaning_ for _well-doing_.