tion
of _Castle Dangerous_, which was not only finished but begun when the
fatal disease of the brain which killed him had got the upper hand. The
introduction to the _Chronicles of the Canongate_, written in 1827, is
one of the most exquisite and masterly things that he ever did, though,
from its not actually forming part of one of the novels, it is
comparatively little known. The _Fair Maid of Perth_, a year later, has
been one of the most popular of all abroad, and not the least so at
home; and there are critics who rank _Anne of Geierstein_, in 1829, very
high indeed. Few defenders are found for _Count Robert of Paris_, which
was in fact written in the valley of the shadow; and it may be admitted
that in his earlier days Scott would certainly have been able to give it
a fuller development and a livelier turn. Yet the opening scene, though
a little too long, the escape from the vaults of the Blachernal, and not
a few other things, would be recognised as marvellous if they could be
put before a competent but unbiassed taste, which knew nothing of Sir
Walter's other work, but was able to compare it not merely with the work
of his predecessors but with that of his imitators, numerous and
enterprising as they were, at the time that _Count Robert_ appeared.

In such a comparison Scott at his worst excels all others at their best.
It is not merely that in this detail and in that he has the mastery, but
that he has succeeded in making novel writing in general turn over a
completely new leaf, enter upon a distinctly different competition.
With the masterpieces of the eighteenth century novel he does not enter
into comparison at all: he is working on a different scene, addressing a
different audience, using different tools, colours, methods. Every
successful novelist up to his time had, whatever his ostensible "_temp._
of tale," quietly assumed the thoughts, the speech, the manners, even to
a great extent the dress and details of his own day. And in this
assumption all but the greatest had inevitably estranged from them the
ears and eyes of days that were not their own, which days, no doubt,
were in turn themselves rapidly hastening to change, but never to revert
to the original surroundings. Scott had done in prose fiction what the
poets and the dramatists had sometimes done, what very rare philosophers
had sometimes done likewise. Ostensibly going to the past, and to some
extent really borrowing its circumstances, he had in