the spur of
circumstances, and have their fates uniformly determined by the agency
of the subordinate persons. This arises from the author having usually
represented them as foreigners to whom every thing in Scotland is
strange,--a circumstance which serves as his apology for entering into
many minute details which are reflectively, as it were, addressed to the
reader through the medium of the hero. While he is going into
explanations and details which, addressed directly to the reader, might
appear tiresome and unnecessary, he gives interest to them by exhibiting
the effect which they produce upon the principal person of his drama,
and at the same time obtains a patient hearing for what might otherwise
be passed over without attention. But if he gains this advantage, it is
by sacrificing the character of the hero. No one can be interesting to
the reader who is not himself a prime agent in the scene. This is
understood even by the worthy citizen and his wife, who are introduced
as prolocutors in Fletcher's Knight of the Burning Pestle. When they are
asked what the principal person of the drama shall do?--the answer is
prompt and ready--"Marry, let him come forth and kill a giant." There is
a good deal of tact in the request. Every hero in poetry, in fictitious
narrative, ought to come forth and do or say something or other which no
other person could have done or said; make some sacrifice, surmount some
difficulty, and become interesting to us otherwise than by his mere
appearance on the scene, the passive tool of the other characters.

The insipidity of this author's heroes may be also in part referred to
the readiness with which the twists and turns his story to produce some
immediate and perhaps temporary effect. This could hardly be done
without representing the principal character either as inconsistent or
flexible in his principles. The ease with which Waverley adopts and
after forsakes the Jacobite party in 1745 is a good example of what we
mean. Had he been painted as a steady character, his conduct would have
been improbable. The author was aware of this; and yet, unwilling to
relinquish an opportunity of introducing the interior of the Chevalier's
military court, the circumstances of the battle of Preston-pans, and so
forth, he hesitates not to sacrifice poor Waverley, and to represent him
as a reed blown about at the pleasure of every breeze: a less careless
writer would probably have taken some pains to gain