Much-scribbling

Shakspere's friends understood the allusion contained in the first act, after the apparition of the Ghost, when Hamlet calls for his 'tablets.' They knew that the much-scribbling Montaigne was meant, who, as he avows, had so bad a memory that he could not receive any commission without writing it down in his 'tablets' (tablettes).

The list of these […] included all the unknown names of the first half of our present and much-scribbling century,—statesmen, politicians, divines, historians, critics, novelists, and poets who had been, were, or were to be famous. […] It was one of the many weaknesses of Poe […] to dispraise most of our high-minded and stout-hearted men and women of letters.

Or else she will turn to literary work, like the much-scribbling and intolerable Hrothsuitha of Gandersheim. The literary and religious impulse then spreads to the men.

After all, Mason, the much-scribbling, vain, place-seeking, simple ‘‘Scroddles,” as his friend called him, hit somehow on the right idea of biography, as did another foolish sycophant of the age […]