fraid of making fools of themselves,
and are unaware that that transformation has already been triumphantly
effected.

Scott is separated, then, from much of the later conception of fiction
by this quality of eloquence. The whole of the best and finest work of
the modern novelist (such as the work of Mr Henry James) is primarily
concerned with that delicate and fascinating speech which burrows deeper
and deeper like a mole; but we have wholly forgotten that speech which
mounts higher and higher like a wave and falls in a crashing peroration.
Perhaps the most thoroughly brilliant and typical man of this decade is
Mr Bernard Shaw. In his admirable play of 'Candida' it is clearly a part
of the character of the Socialist clergyman that he should be eloquent,
but he is not eloquent, because the whole 'G.B.S.' condition of mind
renders impossible that poetic simplicity which eloquence requires.
Scott takes his heroes and villains seriously, which is, after all, the
way that heroes and villains take themselves--especially villains. It is
the custom to call these old romantic poses artificial; but the word
artificial is the last and silliest evasion of criticism. There was
never anything in the world that was really artificial. It had some
motive or ideal behind it, and generally a much better one than we
think.

Of the faults of Scott as an artist it is not very necessary to speak,
for faults are generally and easily pointed out, while there is yet no
adequate valuation of the varieties and contrasts of virtue. We have
compiled a complete botanical classification of the weeds in the
poetical garden, but the flowers still flourish neglected and nameless.
It is true, for example, that Scott had an incomparably stiff and
pedantic way of dealing with his heroines: he made a lively girl of
eighteen refuse an offer in the language of Dr Johnson. To him, as to
most men of his time, woman was not an individual, but an
institution--a toast that was drunk some time after that of Church and
King. But it is far better to consider the difference rather as a
special merit, in that he stood for all those clean and bracing shocks
of incident which are untouched by passion or weakness, for a certain
breezy bachelorhood, which is almost essential to the literature of
adventure. With all his faults, and all his triumphs, he stands for the
great mass of natural manliness which must be absorbed into art unless
art is to be a mere luxury and frea