er for some one else,--but Clara's shattered reason, Tyrrel's
despair, and Etherington's certainty that he has the cards in his hand,
are all incredible and unaccountable--mere mid-winter madness.
Nevertheless, this, Scott's only attempt at actual contemporary fiction,
has extraordinary interest and great merit as such, while Meg Dods would
save half a dozen novels, and the society at the Well is hardly
inferior.

And then came _Redgauntlet_. A great lover of Scott once nearly invoked
the assistance of Captain M'Turk to settle matters with a friend of his
who would not pronounce _Redgauntlet_ the best of all the novels, and
would only go so far as to admit that it contains some, and many, of the
best things. The best as a novel it cannot be called, because the action
is desultory in the extreme. There are wide gaps even in the chain of
story interest that does exist, and the conclusion, admirable in itself,
has even for Scott a too audacious disconnection with any but the very
faintest concern of the nominally first personages. But even putting
'Wandering Willie's Tale' aside, and taking for granted the merits of
that incomparable piece (of which, it may yet be gently hinted, it was
not so very long ago still a singularity and mark of daring to perceive
the absolute supremacy), the good things in this fascinating book defy
exaggeration. The unique autobiographic interest--so fresh and keen and
personal, and yet so free from the odious intrusion of actual
personality--of the earlier epistolary presentment of Saunders and Alan
Fairford, of Darsie and Green Mantle; Peter Peebles, peer of Scott's
best; Alan's journey and Darsie's own wanderings; the scenes at the
Provost's dinner-table and in Tam Turnpenny's den; that unique figure,
the skipper of the _Jumping Jenny_; the extraordinarily effective
presentment of Prince Charles, already in his decadence, if not yet in
his dotage; the profusion of smaller sketches and vignettes everywhere
grouped round the mighty central triumph of the adventures of Piper
Steenie,--who but Scott has done such things? He never put so much again
in a single book. There is something in it which it is hardly fanciful
to take as a 'note of finishing,' as the last piece of the work, that,
gigantic as it was, was not exactly collar work, not sheer hewing of
wood and drawing of water for the taskmasters. And it was fitting that
the book, so varied, so fresh, so gracious and kindly, so magnificent in