author having usually represented them as foreigners to whom every thing in Scotland is strange,—­a circumstance which serves as his apology for entering into many minute details which are reflectively, as it were, addressed to the reader through the medium of the hero.  While he is going into explanations and details which, addressed directly to the reader, might appear tiresome and unnecessary, he gives interest to them by exhibiting the effect which they produce upon the principal person of his drama, and at the same time obtains a patient hearing for what might otherwise be passed over without attention.  But if he gains this advantage, it is by sacrificing the character of the hero.  No one can be interesting to the reader who is not himself a prime agent in the scene.  This is understood even by the worthy citizen and his wife, who are introduced as prolocutors in Fletcher’s Knight of the Burning Pestle.  When they are asked what the principal person of the drama shall do?—­the answer is prompt and ready—­“Marry, let him come forth and kill a giant.”  There is a good deal of tact in the request.  Every hero in poetry, in fictitious narrative, ought to come forth and do or say something or other which no other person could have done or said; make some sacrifice, surmount some difficulty, and become interesting to us otherwise than by his mere appearance on the scene, the passive tool of the other characters.

The insipidity of this author’s heroes may be also in part referred to the readiness with which the twists and turns his story to produce some immediate and perhaps temporary effect.  This could hardly be done without representing the principal character either as inconsistent or flexible in his principles.  The ease with which Waverley adopts and after forsakes the Jacobite party in 1745 is a good example of what we mean.  Had he been painted as a steady character, his conduct would have been improbable.  The author was aware of this; and yet, unwilling to relinquish an opportunity of introducing the interior of the Chevalier’s military court, the circumstances of the battle of Preston-pans, and so forth, he hesitates not to sacrifice poor Waverley, and to represent him as a reed blown about at the pleasure of every breeze:  a less careless writer would probably have taken some pains to gain the end proposed in a more artful and ingenious manner.  But our author was hasty, and has paid the penalty of his haste.

We have hinted that we are disposed to question the originality of these novels in point of invention, and that in doing so, we do not consider ourselves as derogating from the merit of the author, to whom, on the contrary, we give the praise due to one who has collected and brought out with accuracy and effect, incidents and manners which might otherwise have slept in oblivion.  We proceed to our proofs.[1]