PARTICULAR MENTION.—­In 1815, before half the reading world had delighted themselves with Waverley, his rapid pen had produced Guy Mannering, a story of English and Scottish life, superior to Waverley in its original descriptions and more general interest.  He is said to have written it in six weeks at Christmas time.  The scope of this volume will not permit a critical examination of the Waverley novels.  The world knows them almost by heart.  In The Antiquary, which appeared in 1816, we have a rare delineation of local manners, the creation of distinct characters, and a humorous description of the sudden arming of volunteers in fear of invasion by the French. The Antiquary was a free portrait or sketch of Mr. George Constable, filled in perhaps unconsciously from the author’s own life; for he, no less than his friend, delighted in collecting relics, and in studying out the lines, praetoria, and general castrametation of the Roman armies.  Andrew Gemmels was the original of that Edie Ochiltree who was bold enough to dispute the antiquary’s more learned assertions.

In the same year, 1816, was published the first series of The Tales of my Landlord, containing The Black Dwarf and Old Mortality, both valuable as contributions to Scottish history.  The former is not of much literary merit; and the author was so little pleased with it, that he brought it to a hasty conclusion; the latter is an extremely animated sketch of the sufferings of the Covenanters at the hands of Grahame of Claverhouse, with a fairer picture of that redoubted commander than the Covenanters have drawn. Rob Roy, the best existing presentation of Highland life and manners, appeared in 1817.  Thus Scott’s prolific pen, like nature, produced annuals.  In 1818 appeared The Heart of Mid-Lothian, that touching story of Jeanie and Effie Deans, which awakens the warmest sympathy of every reader, and teaches to successive generations a moral lesson of great significance and power.

In 1819 he wrote The Bride of Lammermoor, the story of a domestic tragedy, which warns the world that outraged nature will sometimes assert herself in fury; a story so popular that it has been since arranged as an Italian opera.  With that came The Legend of Montrose, another historic sketch of great power, and especially famous for the character of Major Dugald Dalgetty, soldier of fortune and pedant of Marischal College, Aberdeen.  The year 1819 also beheld the appearance of Ivanhoe, which many consider the best of the series.  It describes rural England during the regency of John, the romantic return of Richard Lion-heart, the glowing embers of Norman and Saxon strife, and the story of the Templars.  His portraiture of the Jewess Rebecca is one of the finest in the Waverley Gallery.