Scott’s literary success was due both to genius and to industry.  Of his early precocity Mrs. Cockburn has left a remarkable instance.[203] “I last night supped in Mr. Walter Scott’s.  He has the most extraordinary genius of a boy I ever saw.  He was reading a poem to his mother when I went in.  I made him read on; it was the description of a shipwreck.  His passion rose with the storm.  He lifted his eyes and hands:  ’There’s the mast gone!’ says he.  ‘Crash it goes!  They will all perish!’ After his agitation he turns to me:  ‘That is too melancholy,’ says he.  ’I had better read you something more amusing.’  I preferred a little chat, and asked his opinion of Milton and other books he was reading, which he gave me wonderfully.  One of his observations was:  ’How strange it is that Adam, just new come into the world, should know every thing!  That must be the poet’s fancy,’ says he.  But when told he was created perfect by God, he instantly yielded.  When taken to bed last night, he told his aunt he liked that lady.  ‘What lady?’ says she.  ’Why, Mrs. Cockburn, for I think she is a virtuoso,—­like myself.’  ‘Dear Walter,’ says Aunt Jenny, ‘what is a virtuoso?’ ’Don’t ye know?  Why, it’s one who wishes and will know every thing.’  Now, sir, you will think this a very silly story.  Pray, what age do you suppose this boy to be?  Name it, now, before I tell you.  ‘Why, twelve or fourteen.’  No such thing; he is not quite six years old.  He has a lame leg, for which he was a year at Bath, and has acquired the perfect English accent, which he has not lost since he came, and he reads like a Garrick.  You will allow this an uncommon exotic.”

The vivid imagination and love of knowledge which Scott displayed from his earliest years were supplemented throughout his life by an assiduous self-cultivation.  The great and varied body of legendary lore which he accumulated, together with his ever active and universal sympathy with mankind, made the chief elements in his fictions.  There is no one respect in which the Waverley novels are pre-eminent.  As regards plot, Scott has been frequently surpassed.  While “Kenilworth,” the “Bride of Lammermoor,” and “Ivanhoe,” are well constructed, the plan of “Rob Roy” and “The Monastery” are lacking in sequence.  Other novelists, too, have drawn character with quite as much power.  But the Waverly novels have attained their supreme position in public estimation by a rare and well balanced union of different qualities.  They contain beautiful examples of the sublime, and amusing examples of the ludicrous.  They reflect nature in various phases, and always with picturesqueness, power, and truth.  Of Scott’s historical novels we shall speak elsewhere.  Of those which relate especially to his own country, the most remarkable merit consists in the fidelity with which they have reflected the Scotch nationality.  On this account they will always possess a value for the student of social history.