actors or artists who venture to change the character of their efforts,
that, in so doing, they may enlarge the scale of their art.

There is some justice in this opinion, as there always is in such as
attain general currency. It may often happen on the stage, that an
actor, by possessing in a preeminent degree the external qualities
necessary to give effect to comedy, may be deprived of the right to
aspire to tragic excellence; and in painting or literary composition, an
artist or poet may be master exclusively of modes of thought, and powers
of expression, which confine him to a single course of subjects. But
much more frequently the same capacity which carries a man to popularity
in one department will obtain for him success in another, and that must
be more particularly the case in literary composition, than either in
acting or painting, because the adventurer in that department is not
impeded in his exertions by any peculiarity of features, or conformation
of person, proper for particular parts, or, by any peculiar mechanical
habits of using the pencil, limited to a particular class of subjects.

Whether this reasoning be correct or otherwise, the present author felt,
that, in confining himself to subjects purely Scottish, he was not only
likely to weary out the indulgence of his readers, but also greatly to
limit his own power of affording them pleasure. In a highly polished
country, where so much genius is monthly employed in catering for public
amusement, a fresh topic, such as he had himself had the happiness to
light upon, is the untasted spring of the desert;--

"Men bless their stars and call it luxury."

But when men and horses, cattle, camels, and dromedaries, have poached
the spring into mud, it becomes loathsome to those who at first drank of
it with rapture; and he who had the merit of discovering it, if he would
preserve his reputation with the tribe, must display his talent by a
fresh discovery of untasted fountains.

If the author, who finds himself limited to a particular class of
subjects, endeavours to sustain his reputation by striving to add a
novelty of attraction to themes of the same character which have been
formerly successful under his management, there are manifest reasons
why, after a certain point, he is likely to fail. If the mine be not
wrought out, the strength and capacity of the miner become necessarily
exhausted. If he closely imitates the narratives which he has before
render