ed by saying that modern readers are
neglected by Providence. The ground of this neglect, in so far as it
exists, must be found, I suppose, in the general sentiment that, like
the beard of Polonius, he is too long. Yet it is surely a peculiar thing
that in literature alone a house should be despised because it is too
large, or a host impugned because he is too generous. If romance be
really a pleasure, it is difficult to understand the modern reader's
consuming desire to get it over, and if it be not a pleasure, it is
difficult to understand his desire to have it at all. Mere size, it
seems to me, cannot be a fault. The fault must lie in some
disproportion. If some of Scott's stories are dull and dilatory, it is
not because they are giants but because they are hunchbacks or cripples.
Scott was very far indeed from being a perfect writer, but I do not
think that it can be shown that the large and elaborate plan on which
his stories are built was by any means an imperfection. He arranged his
endless prefaces and his colossal introductions just as an architect
plans great gates and long approaches to a really large house. He did
not share the latter-day desire to get quickly through a story. He
enjoyed narrative as a sensation; he did not wish to swallow a story
like a pill that it should do him good afterwards. He desired to taste
it like a glass of port, that it might do him good at the time. The
reader sits late at his banquets. His characters have that air of
immortality which belongs to those of Dumas and Dickens. We should not
be surprised to meet them in any number of sequels. Scott, in his heart
of hearts, probably would have liked to write an endless story without
either beginning or close.

Walter Scott is a great, and, therefore, mysterious man. He will never
be understood until Romance is understood, and that will be only when
Time, Man, and Eternity are understood. To say that Scott had more than
any other man that ever lived a sense of the romantic seems, in these
days, a slight and superficial tribute. The whole modern theory arises
from one fundamental mistake--the idea that romance is in some way a
plaything with life, a figment, a conventionality, a thing upon the
outside. No genuine criticism of romance will ever arise until we have
grasped the fact that romance lies not upon the outside of life but
absolutely in the centre of it. The centre of every man's existence is a
dream. Death, disease, insanity,