ability of Richard, the craft and
dexterity of Iago, and the stubborn energy of Shylock,--but we never
applaud, nor wish to emulate. We see them too truly as they are. The
Author of Waverley, though he approaches nearer to the fault in question
than Shakspeare, can never be fairly said to have committed it.
Cleveland, Robertson, Rashleigh, Christian, might, by a few touches
added, and a few expunged, become very captivating villains, and produce
a brisk fermentation of mischief in many young and weak heads. But of
such false touches and suppressions of truth, the author has not been
guilty. He has not disguised their vices and their weaknesses,--he has
not endowed them with incompatible virtues; but, just favouring them
charitably, so as to take off the edge of our dislike, has exhibited
them nearly as they must necessarily have been. The same discretion is
observable in his impersonation of those equivocal characters in humble
life which he has invested with an interest hitherto unknown. Meg
Merrilies, Madge Wildfire, Ratclifte, and the Smuggler in Redgauntlet,
are characters in whom are found redeeming traits of the best feeling,
and which, therefore, interest us deeply. Yet all of them are more or
less at war with order and the institutions of society, and must fall
under its heavy ban. And, interested as we are, we are never led to deem
the censures of society unjust, or to take part with them in their war
against it.

_Style._

Beauty of style is not one of Sir Walter Scott's chief merits. His
choice of expressions is, however, better than his disposition of them.
His sentences are too full of expletives,--too long, and loosely
arranged; exuberant, like his fancy, and untrimmed, as if never
subjected to a process of compression,--a _limae labor_, perhaps
incompatible with the wonderful expedition with which work after work
has issued from the press. This facility of production is too remarkable
to be overlooked. It is almost unexampled. Voltaire and Lord Byron have
written some of their best works in an inconceivably short time. Dryden
produced five act plays at the rate of three a-year. Shakspeare is
supposed in one year to have written five, among which is that whereon
he must have expended most thought--Hamlet. This, considering the value
of the productions, would perhaps be the greatest feat on record, if we
could be sure that the plays had been wholly invented and written within
the twelve-month--but this ca