n fiction. On the
wealth and vraisemblance and variety of character it were superfluous to
dilate. As in Shakspeare, there is not even a minor person but lives
and is of flesh and blood, if we except, perhaps, Dousterswivel and Sir
Arthur Wardour. Sir Arthur is only Sir Robert Hazlewood over again, with
a slightly different folly and a somewhat more amiable nature. Lovel's
place, as usual, is among the shades of heroes, and his love-affair is
far less moving, far more summarily treated, than that of Jenny Caxon.
The skilful contrasts are perhaps most remarkable when we compare
Elspeth of the Burnfoot with the gossiping old women in the post-office
at Fairport,--a town studied perhaps from Arbroath. It was the opinion
of Sydney Smith that every one of the novels, before "The Fortunes of
Nigel," contained a Meg Merrilies and a Dominie Sampson. He may have
recognized a male Meg in Edie Ochiltree,--the invaluable character who is
always behind a wall, always overhears everything, and holds the threads
of the plot. Or he may have been hypercritical enough to think that
Elspeth of the Burnfoot is the Meg of the romance. Few will agree with
him that Meg Merrilies, in either of these cases, is "good, but good too
often."

The supposed "originals" of certain persons in the tale have been
topics of discussion. The character of Oldbuck, like most characters in
fiction, is a combination of traits observed in various persons. Scott
says, in a note to the Ashiestiel fragment of Autobiography, that Mr.
George Constable, an old friend of his father's, "had many of those
peculiarities of character which long afterwards I tried to develop in
the character of Jonathan Oldbuck." Sir Walter, when a child, made Mr.
Constable's acquaintance at Prestonpans in 1777, where he explored the
battle-field "under the learned guidance of Dalgetty." Mr. Constable
first introduced him to Shakspeare's plays, and gave him his first
German dictionary. Other traits may have been suggested by John Clerk
of Eldin, whose grandfather was the hero of the story "Praetorian here,
Praetorian there, I made it wi' a flaughter spade." Lockhart is no
doubt right in thinking that Oldbuck is partly a caricature of Oldbuck's
creator,--Sir Walter indeed frankly accepted the kinship; and the book
which he began on his own collection he proposed to style "Reliquim
Trotcosienses; or, the Gabions of Jonathan Oldbuck."

Another person who added a few points to Oldbuck was "San