[37] De Quincey defines picturesque as “the characteristic pushed into a sensible excess.”  The word began to excite discussion in the last quarter of the eighteenth century.  See vol. i., p. 185, for Gilpin’s “Observations on Picturesque Beauty.”  See also Uvedale Price, “Essays on the Picturesque as Compared with the Sublime and the Beautiful,” three vols., 1794-96.  Price finds the character of the picturesque to consist in roughness, irregularity, intricacy, and sudden variation.  Gothic buildings are more picturesque than Grecian, and a ruin than an entire building.  Hovels, cottages, mills, interiors of old barns are picturesque.  “In mills particularly, such is the extreme intricacy of the wheels and the wood work:  such is the singular variety of forms and of lights and shadows, of mosses and weather stains from the constant moisture, of plants springing from the rough joints of the stones—­that, even without the addition of water, an old mill has the greatest charm for a painter” (i., 55).  He mentions, as a striking example of picturesque beauty, a hollow lane or by-road with broken banks, thickets, old neglected pollards, fantastic roots bared by the winter torrents, tangled trailers and wild plants, and infinite variety of tints and shades (i., 23-29).  He denounces the improvements of Capability Brown (see “Romanticism,” vol. i., p. 124):  especially the clump, the belt and regular serpentine walks with smooth turf edges, the made water with uniformly sloping banks—­all as insipidly formal, in their way, as the old Italian gardens which Brown’s landscapes displaced.

[38] “Essay on Walter Scott.”

[39] Andrew Lang reminds us that, after all, only three of the Waverley Novels are “chivalry romances.”  The following are the only numbers of the series that have to do with the Middle Ages:  “Count Robert of Paris,” circa 1090 A.D.; “The Betrothed,” 1187; “The Talisman,” 1193; “Ivanhoe,” 1194; “The Fair Maid of Perth,” 1402; “Quentin Durward,” 1470; “Anne of Geierstein,” 1474-77.

[40] “The Romantic School in Germany,” p. 187. Cf. Stendhal, “Walter Scott et la Princesse de Cleves.”  “Mes reflexions seront mal accueilles.  Une immense troupe de litterateurs est interessee a porter aux nues Sir Walter Scott et sa maniere.  L’habit et le collier de cuivre d’un serf du moyen age sont plus facile a decrire que les mouvements du coeur humain. . . .  N’oublions pas un autre avantage de l’ecole de Sir Walter Scott:  la description d’un costume et la pose d’un personnage . . . prennent au moins deux pages.  Les mouvements de l’ame fourniraient a peine quelques lignes.  Ouvrez au hazard un cies volumes de la ’Princesse de Cleves,’ prenez dix pages au hasard, et ensuite comparez les aux dix pages d’Ivanhoe’ ou de ‘Quentin Durward’:  ces derniers ouvrages ont un merite historique.  Ils apprennent quelques petites choses sur l’histoire aux gens qui l’ignorent ou qui le savent mal.