In nothing is Scott stronger than in his environments, his devices for atmosphere.  This he largely secures by means of description and with his wealth of material, does not hesitate to take his time in building up his effects.  Perhaps the most common criticism of him heard to-day refers to his slow movement.  Superabundance of matter is accompanied by prolixity of style, with a result of breeding impatience in the reader, particularly the young.  Boys and girls at present do not offer Scott the unreserved affection once his own, because he now seems an author upon whom to exercise the gentle art of skipping.  Enough has been said as to Scott’s lack of modern economy of means.  It is not necessary to declare that this juvenile reluctance to his leisurely manner stands for total depravity.  The young reader of the present time (to say nothing of the reader more mature) is trained to swifter methods, and demands them.  At the same time, it needs to be asserted that much of the impressiveness of Scott would be lost were his method and manner other than they are:  nor will it do harm to remind ourselves that we all are in danger of losing our power of sustained and consecutive attention in relation to literature, because of the scrap-book tendency of so much modern reading.  On the center-table, cheap magazines; on the stage, vaudeville—­these are habits that sap the ability for slow, ruminative pleasure in the arts.  Luckily, they are not the only modern manifestation, else were we in a parlous state, indeed!  The trouble with Scott, then, may be resolved in part into a trouble with the modern folk who read him.

When one undertakes the thankless task of analyzing coldly and critically the style of Scott, the faults are plain enough.  He constantly uses two adjectives or three in parallel construction where one would do the work better.  The construction of his sentences loses largely the pleasing variation of a richly articulated system by careless punctuation and a tendency to make parallel clauses where subordinate relations should be expressed.  The unnecessary copula stars his pages.  Although his manner in narration rises with his subject and he may be justly called a picturesque and forceful writer, he is seldom a distinguished one.  One does not turn to him for the inevitable word or phrase, or for those that startle by reason of felicity and fitness.  These strictures apply to his descriptive and narrative parts, not to the dialogue:  for there, albeit sins of diffuseness and verbosity are to be noted—­and these are modified by the genial humanity they embody—­he is one of the great masters.  His use of the Scotch dialect adds indefinitely to his attraction and native smack:  racy humor, sly wit, canny logic, heartful sympathy—­all are conveyed by the folk medium.  All subsequent users of the people-speech pay toll to Walter Scott.  Small courtesy should be extended to those who complain that these idioms make hard reading.  Never does Scott give us dialect for its own sake, but always for the sake of a closer revelation of the human heart—­dialect’s one justification.