d five thousand in three months.

In March 1815 Scott went to London, and met two persons of distinction,
the Regent and Lord Byron. There seems to be a little doubt whether
George did or did not adapt the joke of the hanging judge, about
'checkmating this time,' to the authorship of the _Waverley_ novels; but
there is no doubt that he was very civil. With Byron Scott was at once
on very good terms, for Scott was not the man to bear any grudge for the
early fling in _English Bards and Scotch Reviewers_; and Byron, whatever
his faults, 'had more of lion' in him than to be jealous of such a
rival. The difference of their characters was such as to prevent them
from being in the strict sense friends; and Scott's comparison of Byron,
after the separation, to a peacock parted from the hen and lifting up
his voice to tell the world about it, has a rather terribly far-reaching
justice, both of moral and literary criticism, on that noble bard's
whole life and conversation. But there were no little jealousies between
them, and apparently some real liking.

This visit to London was extended to Brussels and Paris, with the result
in verse of the already mentioned and not particularly happy _Field of
Waterloo_, in prose of the interesting _Paul's Letters to his Kinsfolk_,
an account of the tour. Both were published (the poem almost
immediately, _Paul_ not till the new year) after Scott's return to
Abbotsford at the end of September; and he set to work during the later
autumn on his third novel, _The Antiquary_. The book appeared in May
1816, at about the time of the death of Major John Scott, the last but
one of the poet's surviving brothers. It was not at first so popular as
_Guy Mannering_, which, however, it very rapidly caught up even in that
respect: nor is this bad start surprising. To good judges nowadays the
book appeals as strongly at least as any other of its author's--in fact,
Monkbarns and the Mucklebackits, the rescue of Sir Arthur and Isabel,
the scenes in the ruins of St. Ruth's, and especially Edie Ochiltree,
were never surpassed by him. But the story was a daring innovation, or
return, among the novels of its own day. It boldly rejected most of the
ordinary sources of romance interest. It had very little plot; its
humorous characters, though touched with the rarest art, were not
caricatured; and (for which it certainly cannot be praised) that
greatest fault of Scott's,--perhaps his only great fault as a
novelist,--