One thing is certain, that no works of fiction have had such universal popularity both in England and America for so long a period as the Waverley Novels.  Scott reigned as the undisputed monarch of the realm of fiction and romance for twenty-five years.  He gave undiminished entertainment to an entire generation—­and not that merely, but instruction—­in his historical novels, although his views were not always correct,—­as whose ever are?  He who could charm millions of readers, learned and unlearned, for a quarter of a century must have possessed remarkable genius.  Indeed, he was not only the central figure in English literature for a generation, but he was regarded as peculiarly original.  Another style of novels may obtain more passing favor with modern readers, but Scott was justly famous; his works are to-day in every library, and form a delightful part of the education of every youth and maiden who cares to read at all; and he will as a novelist probably live after some who are now prime favorites will be utterly forgotten or ignored.

About 1830 Bulwer was in his early successes; about 1840 Dickens was the rage of his day; about 1850 Thackeray had taken his high grade; and it was about 1860 that George Eliot’s power appeared.  These still retain their own peculiar lines of popularity,—­Bulwer with the romantic few, Thackeray with the appreciative intelligent, George Eliot with a still wider clientage, and Dickens with everybody, on account of his appeal to the universal sentiments of comedy and pathos.  Scott’s influence, somewhat checked during the growth of these reputations and the succession of fertile and accomplished writers on both sides of the Atlantic,—­including the introspective analysts of the past fifteen years,—­has within a decade been rising again, and has lately burst forth in a new group of historical romancers who seem to have “harked back” from the subjective fad of our day to Scott’s healthy, adventurous objectivity.  Not only so, but new editions of the Waverley Novels are coming one by one from the shrewd publishers who keep track of the popular taste, one of the most attractive being issued in Edinburgh at half-a-crown a volume.

The first of Scott’s remarkable series of novels, “Waverley,” published in 1814 when the author was forty-three years of age and at the height of his fame as a poet, took the fashionable and literary world by storm.  The novel had been partly written for several years, but was laid aside, as his edition of Swift and his essays for the supplement of the “Encyclopaedia Britannica,” and other prose writings, employed all the time he had to spare.