somewhere that 'historical novels are
mortal enemies to history,' and we are often tempted to add that they
are mortal enemies to fiction. There maybe an exception or two, but as a
rule the task is simply impracticable. The novelist is bound to come so
near to the facts that we feel the unreality of his portraits. Either
the novel becomes pure cram, a dictionary of antiquities dissolved in a
thin solution of romance, or, which is generally more refreshing, it
takes leave of accuracy altogether and simply takes the plot and the
costume from history, but allows us to feel that genuine moderns are
masquerading in the dress of a bygone century. Even in the last case, it
generally results in a kind of dance in fetters and a comparative
breakdown under self-imposed obligations. 'Ivanhoe' and 'Kenilworth' and
'Quentin Durward,' and the rest are of course audacious anachronisms for
the genuine historian. Scott was imposed upon by his own fancy. He was
probably not aware that his Balfour of Burley was real flesh and blood,
because painted from real people round him, while his Claverhouse is
made chiefly of plumes and jackboots. Scott is chiefly responsible for
the odd perversion of facts, which reached its height, as Macaulay
remarks, in the marvellous performance of our venerated ruler, George
IV. That monarch, he observes, 'thought that he could not give a more
striking proof of his respect for the usages which had prevailed in
Scotland before the Union than by disguising himself in what, before the
Union, was considered by nine Scotchmen out of ten as the dress of a
thief.' The passage recalls the too familiar anecdote about Scott and
the wine-glass consecrated by the sacred lips of his king. At one of
the portrait exhibitions in South Kensington was hung up a
representation of George IV., with the body of a stalwart highlander in
full costume, some seven or eight feet high; the face formed from the
red puffy cheeks developed by innumerable bottles of port and burgundy
at Carlton House; and the whole surmounted by a bonnet with waving
plumes. Scott was chiefly responsible for disguising that elderly London
debauchee in the costume of a wild Gaelic cattle-stealer, and was
apparently insensible of the gross absurdity. We are told that an air of
burlesque was thrown over the proceedings at Holyrood by the apparition
of a true London alderman in the same costume as his master. An alderman
who could burlesque such a monarch must ind