Sir Walter Seott. 453 



* the "storming of the Tolbooth by the Porteous mob, the de- 

 struction of Front-de-BoeuPs Castle, the revels at Kenilworth, and 

 many other scenes scarcely inferior to those that have been just 

 mentioned. 



" In addition to his other abilities, he possessed one which heightened 

 the charm of all the rest : we mean his admirable skill in interweav- 

 ing and disentangling the plots of his stories. In some, it is true, he 

 has not been so happy as in others ; but in his best productions we 

 cannot but admire the masterly facility with which he blends and 

 harmonizes the lighter and more sombre parts of his pictures the 

 gayer and graver scenes in his bustling dramas, and the thorough 

 command of his resources evinced by the style in which he conducts 

 all the actors both of the plot and bye-plot to their proper place in 

 the catastrophe. The dry humour of Monkbarns and the sly but 

 ffood-natured cunning of Ochiltree in the " Antiquary," afford apleas- 

 iig relief to the sadness of Sir Arthur Wardour and the still darker 

 pisode of Lord Genallan's history ; and the old beggarman, whom 

 ne author employs throughout to move the machinery and to connec 

 il its parts, arranges all the characters at the close with the skill o 

 a fugleman, and in such away too, as to show satisfactorily, that no 

 a single character has been introduced that is not necessary to the 

 catastrophe. We might extend our remarks on this head to others 

 of the Waverly novels ; but a single instance will illustrate our mean- 

 ing as well as twenty. 



We have thus allowed to Sir Walter Scott the possession of many 

 valuable requisites for the successful writer of romance ; and we may 

 here say, that he possessed these requisites to a greater extent than 

 any of his followers. His antiquarian research was not superficial, 

 but profound ; his observation of national character and individual 

 peculiarities was not the employment of his leisure hours only, but a 

 habit of which he could not divest himself; the dry and facetious 

 humour which gives piquancy to his comic characters was essentially 

 his own, and adorned his private fire-side at Abbotsford as well as 

 the books issued to the British public: his graphic powers as a 

 painter of scenery and of animated nature were so great, as to raise 

 a general impression that he was the first in rank since the days of 

 Froissart; and his talent in the composition of his various materials 

 perhaps the most astonishing of all his excellencies was without its 

 match in the previous history of romance, and has not yet met with its 

 equal. In conceding thus much of praise to Sir Walter Scott, we have 

 cheerfully done an act of justice ; but the current of popular prejudice 

 cannot so far carry us away as to compel us to give praise even to 

 a Scott where praise is not due. As in his poetry, so in his prose, 

 he is deficient in what Comes under the cognisance of the poetic 

 imagination : and for this very reason he always fails in his attempts 

 to dramatize the intense passions of the human soul and to represent 

 the nobler part of our moral composition. In a word, the essence of 

 tragedy had no existence in Walter Scott. He who wrote the poems 

 might have written the Waverly novels ; but had they been different 

 persons, we may fairly infer that neither could have written tragedy. 

 Scott showed his wisdom by not attempting it. To allude merely to 

 Flora Maclvor, Diana Vcrnon, and Rebecca, the best, undoubtedly, 



