nt
mettre la verite locale." Professor Herford says that what Scott "has in
common with the Romantic temper is simply the feeling for the
picturesque, for colour, for contrast." "Age of Wordsworth," p. 121.

[37] De Quincey defines _picturesque_ as "the characteristic pushed into
a sensible excess." The word began to excite discussion in the last
quarter of the eighteenth century. See vol. i., p. 185, for Gilpin's
"Observations on Picturesque Beauty." See also Uvedale Price, "Essays on
the Picturesque as Compared with the Sublime and the Beautiful," three
vols., 1794-96. Price finds the character of the picturesque to consist
in roughness, irregularity, intricacy, and sudden variation. Gothic
buildings are more picturesque than Grecian, and a ruin than an entire
building. Hovels, cottages, mills, interiors of old barns are
picturesque. "In mills particularly, such is the extreme intricacy of
the wheels and the wood work: such is the singular variety of forms and
of lights and shadows, of mosses and weather stains from the constant
moisture, of plants springing from the rough joints of the stones--that,
even without the addition of water, an old mill has the greatest charm
for a painter" (i., 55). He mentions, as a striking example of
picturesque beauty, a hollow lane or by-road with broken banks, thickets,
old neglected pollards, fantastic roots bared by the winter torrents,
tangled trailers and wild plants, and infinite variety of tints and
shades (i., 23-29). He denounces the improvements of Capability Brown
(see "Romanticism," vol. i., p. 124): especially the clump, the belt and
regular serpentine walks with smooth turf edges, the made water with
uniformly sloping banks--all as insipidly formal, in their way, as the
old Italian gardens which Brown's landscapes displaced.

[38] "Essay on Walter Scott."

[39] Andrew Lang reminds us that, after all, only three of the Waverley
Novels are "chivalry romances." The following are the only numbers of
the series that have to do with the Middle Ages: "Count Robert of Paris,"
_circa_ 1090 A.D.; "The Betrothed," 1187; "The Talisman," 1193;
"Ivanhoe," 1194; "The Fair Maid of Perth," 1402; "Quentin Durward," 1470;
"Anne of Geierstein," 1474-77.

[40] "The Romantic School in Germany," p. 187. _Cf._ Stendhal, "Walter
Scott et la Princesse de Cleves." "Mes reflexions seront mal accueilles.
Une immense troupe de litterateurs est interessee a porter aux nues Sir
Walter