as of men in different classes and ranks of life in all ages--form so
many additions to his pictures, which, if skilfully managed, must give
them infinite variety and interest. There is no end, there never can be
any end, to the combinations of genius with such materials at its
disposal. If men, since this noble art has been created, ever run into
repetition, it will be from want of originality in conception, not variety
in subject.

The prodigious addition which the happy idea of the historical romance has
made to the stores of elevated literature, and through it to the happiness
and improvement of the human race, will not be properly appreciated,
unless the novels most in vogue before the immortal creations of Scott
appeared are considered. If we take up even the most celebrated of them,
and in which the most unequivocal marks of genius are to be discerned, it
seems hardly possible to conceive how their authors could have acquired
the reputation which they so long enjoyed. They are distinguished by a
mawkish sensibility, a perpetual sentimentality, as different from the
bursts of genuine passion as their laboured descriptions of imaginary
scenes are from the graphic sketches which, in later times, have at once
brought reality before the mind's eye. The novels of Charlotte Smith, Miss
Radcliffe, and Miss Burney belong to this school; they are now wellnigh
unreadable. Even works of higher reputation and unquestionable genius in
that age, the _Nouvelle Heloise_ of Rousseau, and _Sir Charles Grandison_
of Richardson, now form a heavy task even for the most ardent lover of
romance. Why is it that works so popular in their day, and abounding with
so many traits of real genius, should so soon have palled upon the world?
Simply because they were not founded upon a broad and general view of
human nature; because they were drawn, not from real life in the
innumerable phases which it presents to the observer, but imaginary life
as it was conceived in the mind of the composer; because they were
confined to one circle and class of society, and having exhausted all the
natural ideas which it could present, its authors were driven, in the
search of variety, to the invention of artificial and often ridiculous
ones.

Sir Walter Scott, as all the world knows, was the inventor of the
historical romance. As if to demonstrate how ill founded was the opinion,
that all things were worked out, and that originality no longer was
accessible f