to write, and which he wished to publish anonymously for the following reason:  “I have not the least doubt that I will make a popular book, for I trust it will be both interesting and useful; but I never intended to engage in any proper historical labour, for which I have neither time, talent, nor inclination....  In truth it would take ten years of any man’s life to write such a History of Scotland as he should put his name to."[427] He called his Napoleon “the most severe and laborious undertaking which choice or accident ever placed on my shoulders."[428]

More than once Scott expresses the opinion that though novels may be useful to arouse curiosity about history, and to impart some knowledge to people who will not do any serious thinking, they may, on the other hand, work harm by satisfying with their superficial information those who would otherwise read history.[429] It seems as if he designed the Life of Napoleon and the History of Scotland for a new reading class that the novels had been creating, and as if he wished to make the step of transition not too long.  We can almost fancy them as a series of graded books arranged to lead the people of Great Britain up to a sufficient height of historical information.  The Tales of a Grandfather were intended for the beginners who had never been infected by the common heresy concerning the dulness of history, and who were blessed with sufficiently active imagination to make the sugar-coating of fiction superfluous.[430]

But great as was the interest that Scott took in the historical aspect of his work, his artistic sense guided his use of materials, and he was well aware of the danger of over-working the mine.  The principles on which he chose periods and events to represent are illustrated in many of the introductions.  Of The Fortunes of Nigel he said:  “The reign of James I., in which George Heriot flourished, gave unbounded scope to invention in the fable, while at the same time it afforded greater variety and discrimination of character than could, with historical consistency, have been introduced if the scene had been laid a century earlier."[431]

His first published attempt at fiction-writing was a conclusion to the novel, Queenhoo-Hall,[432] of which his opinion was that it would never be popular because antiquarian knowledge was displayed in it too liberally.  “The author,” he says, “forgot ... that extensive neutral ground, the large proportion, that is, of manners and sentiments which are common to us and to our ancestors, having been handed down unaltered from them to us, or which, arising out of the principles of our common nature, must have existed in either state of society."[433] Scott’s practice in regard to the language of his historical novels was based on much the same theory.  He intended to admit “no word or turn of phraseology betraying an origin directly modern,"[434] but to avoid obsolete words for the most part; and he never attempted