In the all-important matter of characterization, Scott yields the palm to very few modern masters.  Merely to think of the range, variety and actuality of his creations is to feel the blood move quicker.  From figures of historic and regal importance—­Richard, Elizabeth, Mary—­to the pure coinage of imagination—­Dandy Dinmont, Dugald Dalgetty, Dominie Sampson, Rebecca, Lucy, Di Vernon and Jeanie—­how the names begin to throng and what a motley yet welcome company is assembled in the assizes where this romancer sits to mete out fate to those within the wide bailiwick of his imagination!  This central gift he possessed with the princes of story-making.  It is also probable that of the imaginative writers of English speech, nobody but Shakspere and Dickens—­and Dickens alone among fellow fiction-makers—­has enriched the workaday world with so many people, men and women, whose speech, doings and fates are familiar and matter for common reference.  And this is the gift of gifts.  It is sometimes said that Scott’s heroes and heroines (especially, perhaps, the former) are lay figures, not convincing, vital creations.  There is a touch of truth in it.  His striking and successful figures are not walking gentlemen and leading ladies.  When, for example, you recall “Guy Mannering,” you do not think of the young gentleman of that name, but of Meg Merillies as she stands in the night in high relief on a bank, weather-beaten of face and wild of dress, hurling her anathema:  “Ride your ways, Ellangowan!” In characters rather of humble pathos like Jeanie Deans or of eccentric humor like Dominie Sampson, Scott is at his best.  He confessed to mis-liking his heroes and only warming up to full creative activity over his more unconventional types:  border chiefs, buccaneers, freebooters and smugglers.  “My rogue always, in spite of me, turns out my hero,” is his whimsical complaint.

But this does not apply in full force to his women.  Di Vernon—­who does not recall that scene where from horseback in the moonlight she bends to her lover, parting from him with the words:  “Farewell, Frank, forever!  There is a gulf between us—­a gulf of absolute perdition.  Where we go, you must not follow; what we do, you must not share in—­farewell, be happy!” That is the very accent of Romance, in its true and proper setting:  not to be staled by time nor custom.

Nor will it do to claim that he succeeds with his Deans and fails with women of regal type:  his Marys and Elizabeth Tudors.  In such portrayals it seems to me he is pre-eminently fine:  one cannot understand the critics who see in such creations mere stock figures supplied by history not breathed upon with the breath of life.  Scott had a definite talent for the stage-setting of royalty:  that is one of the reasons for the popularity of “Kenilworth.”  It is, however, a true discrimination which finds more of life and variety in Scott’s principal women than in his men of like position.  But his Rob Roys, Hatteraicks and Dalgettys justify all praise and help to explain that title of Wizard of the North which he won and wore.