remarkable verse romances, and therefore had less to do in engineering the prose romance.  Last of all, he had seen what to avoid—­not merely in his editing of Strutt’s Queenhoo Hall (a valuable property-room for the novel, but nothing of a real novel), but in his reading of the failures of his predecessors and contemporaries.  The very beginning of Waverley itself (which most people skip) is invaluable, because it shows us that at the time he wrote it (which, it need hardly be said, was a long time before its completion) he had not the knowledge or the courage to strike straight out into the stream of action and conversation, but troubled himself with accumulating bladders and arranging ropes for the possible salvation of his narrative if it got into difficulties.  Very soon he knew that it would not get into difficulties:  and away he went.

It ought not to be necessary, but from some symptoms it may be desirable, to point out that Scott is very far from being an historical novelist only.  An acute French critic, well acquainted with both literatures, once went so far as to say that there were a good many professed “philosophical” novels which did not contain such keen psychology as Scott’s:  and I would undertake to show a good deal of cause on this side.  But short of it, it is undeniable that he can do perfectly well without any historical scaffolding.  There is practically nothing of it in his second and third novels, Guy Mannering and The Antiquary, each of which good judges have sometimes ranked as his very best:  there is as little or less in St. Ronan’s Well, a very fine thing as it is, and one which, but for James Ballantyne’s meddling folly and prudery, would have been much finer.  The incomparable little conversation—­scenes and character-sketches scattered among the Introductions to the novels—­especially the history of Crystal Croftangry—­show that he could perfectly well have dispensed with all out-of-the-way incident had he chosen.  But, as a rule, he did not so choose:  and, in the majority of cases, he preferred to take his out-of-the-way incident from historical sources.  Not here, unfortunately, can we allow ourselves even a space proportionate to that given above in Miss Austen’s case to the criticism of individual novels:  but luckily there is not much need of this.  The brilliant overture of Waverley as such, with its entirely novel combination of the historical and the “national” elements upon the still more novel background of Highland scenery; the equally vivid and vigorous narrative and the more interesting personages of Old Mortality and Rob Roy; the domestic tragedy, with the historical element for little more than a framework, of the Heart of Midlothian and the Bride of Lammermoor; the little masterpiece of A Legend of Montrose; the fresh departure, with purely English subject, of Ivanhoe and its triumphant sequels in Kenilworth, Quentin Durward, and