e
in its broadest sense, that he was fitted to tell: and fortunately for
him Walter Scott, then in the very height of his popularity, had made
it supremely fashionable. In this it is only needful to draw character
in bold outlines; to represent men not under the influence of motives
that hold sway in artificial and complex society, but as breathed upon
by those common airs of reflection and swept hither and thither by
those common gales of passion that operate upon us all as members of
the race. It is not the personality of the actors to which the
attention is supremely drawn, though even in that there is ample field
for the exhibition of striking characterization. It is the events that
carry us along; it is the catastrophe to which they are hurrying that
excites the feelings and absorbs the thoughts. There can be no greater
absurdity than to speak of this kind of story, as is sometimes done,
as being inferior in itself to those devoted exclusively to the
delineation of manners or character, or even of the subtler motives
which act upon the heart and life. As well might one say that the
"Iliad" is a poem of inferior type to the "Excursion." Again, it is
only those who think it must be easy to write what it is easy to read
who will fall into the mistake of fancying that a novel of (p. 034)
adventure which has vitality enough to live does not owe its existence
to the arduous, though it may be largely unconscious, exercise of high
creative power. No better correction for this error can be found than
in looking over the names of the countless imitators of Scott, some of
them distinguished in other fields, who have made so signal a failure
that even the very fact that they attempted to imitate him at all has
been wholly forgotten.

"The Spy" appeared almost at the very close of 1821. It was not long
before its success was assured. Early in 1822 the newspapers were able
to assert that it had met with a sale unprecedented in the annals of
American literature. What that phrase meant is partly indicated by the
fact that it had then been found necessary to publish a second edition.
In March a third edition was put to the press; and in the same month
the story was dramatized and acted with the greatest success. Still in
the abject dependence upon foreign estimate which was the preeminent
characteristic of a large portion of the educated class of that day,
many felt constrained to wait for the judgment that would come back