about
Brignall banks and Rosabelle exemplify 'the peculiar skill with which
Scott employs proper names;' nor, he adds, 'is there a surer sign of
high poetical genius.' The last remark might possibly be disputed; if
Milton possessed the same talent, so did Lord Macaulay, whose ballads,
admirable as they are, are not first-rate poetry; but the conclusion to
which the remark points is one which is illustrated by each of these
cases. The secret of the power is simply this, that a man whose mind is
full of historical associations somehow communicates to us something of
the sentiment which they awake in himself. Scott, as all who saw him
tell us, could never see an old tower, or a bank, or a rush of a stream
without instantly recalling a boundless collection of appropriate
anecdotes. He might be quoted as a case in point by those who would
explain all poetical imagination by the power of associating ideas. He
is the poet of association. A proper name acts upon him like a charm. It
calls up the past days, the heroes of the '41, or the skirmish of
Drumclog, or the old Covenanting times, by a spontaneous and
inexplicable magic. When the barest natural object is taken into his
imagination, all manner of past fancies and legends crystallise around
it at once.

Though it is more difficult to explain how the same glow which ennobled
them to him is conveyed to his readers, the process somehow takes place.
We catch the enthusiasm. A word, which strikes us as a bare abstraction
in the report of the Censor General, say, or in a collection of poor law
returns, gains an entirely new significance when he touches it in the
most casual manner. A kind of mellowing atmosphere surrounds all
objects in his pages, and tinges them with poetical hues. Even the
Scottish dialect, repulsive to some ignorant Southrons, becomes musical
to his true admirers. In this power lies one secret of Scott's most
successful writing. Thus, for example, I often fancy that the second
title of 'Waverley'--''Tis Sixty Years Since'--indicates precisely the
distance of time at which a romantic novelist should place himself from
his creations. They are just far enough from us to have acquired a
certain picturesque colouring, which conceals the vulgarity, and yet
leaves them living and intelligible beings. His best stories might be
all described as 'Tales of a Grandfather.' They have the charm of
anecdotes told to the narrator by some old man who had himself been part
of