This hack-work was done by Scott without enthusiasm, to earn money for his investment in real estate, and is not of transcendent merit.  Obscurer men than he had performed such literary drudgery with more ability, but no writer was ever more industrious.  The amount of work which he accomplished at this period was prodigious, especially when we remember that his duties as sheriff and clerk of Sessions occupied eight months of the year.  He was more familiar with the literary history of Queen Anne’s reign than any subsequent historian, if we except Macaulay, whose brilliant career had not yet begun.  He took, of course, a different view of Swift from the writers of the Edinburgh Review, and was probably too favorable in his description of the personal character of the Dean of St. Patrick’s, who is now generally regarded as “inordinately ambitious, arrogant, and selfish; of a morose, vindictive, and haughty temper, utterly destitute of generosity and magnanimity, as well as of tenderness, fidelity, and compassion.”  Lord Jeffrey, in his Review, attacked Swift’s moral character with such consummate ability as to check materially the popularity of his writings, which are universally admitted to be full of genius.  His superb intellect and his morality present a sad contrast,—­as in the cases of Bacon, Burns, and Byron,—­which Scott, on account of the force of his Tory prejudices, did not sufficiently point out.

But as to the novel, when it suddenly appeared, it is not surprising that “Waverley” should at once have attained an unexampled popularity when we consider the mediocrity of all works of fiction at that time, if we except the Irish tales of Maria Edgeworth.  Scott received from Constable L1000 for this romance, then deemed a very liberal remuneration for what cost him but a few months’ work.  The second and third volumes were written in one month.  He wrote with remarkable rapidity when his mind was full of the subject; and his previous studies as an antiquary and as a collector of Scottish poetry and legends fitted him for his work, which was in no sense a task, but a most lively pleasure.

It is not known why Scott published this strikingly original work anonymously; perhaps it was because of his unusual modesty, and the fear that he might lose the popularity he had already enjoyed as a poet.  But it immediately placed him on a higher literary elevation, since it was generally suspected that he was the author.  He could not altogether disguise himself from the keen eyes of Jeffrey and other critics.

The book was received as a revelation.  The first volume is not particularly interesting, but the story continually increases in interest to its close.  It is not a dissection of the human heart; it is not even much of a love-story, but a most vivid narrative, without startling situations or adventures.  Its great charm is its quiet humor,—­not strained into witty expressions which provoke laughter, but a sort of amiable delineation of the character of a born gentleman, with his weaknesses and prejudices, all leaning to virtue’s side.  It is a description of manners peculiar to the Scottish gentry in the middle of the eighteenth century, especially among the Jacobite families then passing away.