greatness to atrocious villany.  We admire the courage of Macbeth, the ability of Richard, the craft and dexterity of Iago, and the stubborn energy of Shylock,—­but we never applaud, nor wish to emulate.  We see them too truly as they are.  The Author of Waverley, though he approaches nearer to the fault in question than Shakspeare, can never be fairly said to have committed it.  Cleveland, Robertson, Rashleigh, Christian, might, by a few touches added, and a few expunged, become very captivating villains, and produce a brisk fermentation of mischief in many young and weak heads.  But of such false touches and suppressions of truth, the author has not been guilty.  He has not disguised their vices and their weaknesses,—­he has not endowed them with incompatible virtues; but, just favouring them charitably, so as to take off the edge of our dislike, has exhibited them nearly as they must necessarily have been.  The same discretion is observable in his impersonation of those equivocal characters in humble life which he has invested with an interest hitherto unknown.  Meg Merrilies, Madge Wildfire, Ratclifte, and the Smuggler in Redgauntlet, are characters in whom are found redeeming traits of the best feeling, and which, therefore, interest us deeply.  Yet all of them are more or less at war with order and the institutions of society, and must fall under its heavy ban.  And, interested as we are, we are never led to deem the censures of society unjust, or to take part with them in their war against it.

Style.

Beauty of style is not one of Sir Walter Scott’s chief merits.  His choice of expressions is, however, better than his disposition of them.  His sentences are too full of expletives,—­too long, and loosely arranged; exuberant, like his fancy, and untrimmed, as if never subjected to a process of compression,—­a limae labor, perhaps incompatible with the wonderful expedition with which work after work has issued from the press.  This facility of production is too remarkable to be overlooked.  It is almost unexampled.  Voltaire and Lord Byron have written some of their best works in an inconceivably short time.  Dryden produced five act plays at the rate of three a-year.  Shakspeare is supposed in one year to have written five, among which is that whereon he must have expended most thought—­Hamlet.  This, considering the value of the productions, would perhaps be the greatest feat on record, if we could be sure that the plays had been wholly invented and written within the twelve-month—­but this cannot be ascertained.  Nevertheless, for long continued fertility of pen, perhaps Sir Walter Scott may be safely said to have never been exceeded.