" "we
are in the lofty region of romance. In any other hands than those of Sir
Walter Scott, the language and conduct of those great people would have
been as dignified as their situations. We should have heard nothing of
the hero in his new costume 'majoring afore the muckle pier-glass,' of
his arrest by the hint of the Candlestick, of his examination by the
well-powdered Major Melville, or of his fears of being informed against
by Mrs. Nosebag." In short, "while the leading persons and events are as
remote from ordinary life as the inventions of Scudery, the picture of
human nature is as faithful as could have been given by Fielding or Le
Sage." Though this criticism has not the advantage of being new, it is
true; and when we have added that Scott's novels are the novels of the
poet who, next to Shakspeare, knew mankind most widely and well, we have
the secret of his triumph.

For the first time in literature, it was a poet who held the pen of the
romancer in prose. Fielding, Richardson, De Foe, Miss Rurnev, were none
of them made by the gods poetical. Scott himself, with his habitual
generosity, would have hailed his own predecessor in Mrs. Radcliffe. "The
praise may be claimed for Mrs. Radcliffe of having been the first to
introduce into her prose fictions a beautiful and fanciful tone of
natural description and impressive narrative, which had hitherto been
exclusively applied to poetry. . . . Mrs. Radcliffe has a title to be
considered the first poetess of romantic fiction." When "Guy Mannering"
appeared, Wordsworth sneered at it as a work of the Radcliffe school. The
slight difference produced by the introduction of humour could scarcely
be visible to Wordsworth. But Scott would not have been hurt by his
judgment. He had the literary courage to recognize merit even when
obscured by extravagance, and to applaud that in which people of culture
could find neither excellence nor charm. Like Thackeray, he had been
thrilled by Vivaidi in the Inquisition, and he was not the man to hide
his gratitude because his author was now out of fashion.

Thus we see that Scott, when he began "Waverley" in 1805, brought to his
labour no hard-and-fast theory of the art of fiction, but a kindly
readiness to be pleased, and to find good in everything. He brought his
wide knowledge of contemporary Scottish life "from the peer to the
ploughman;" he brought his well-digested wealth of antiquarian lore, and
the poetic skill which had just