f New
Place, Stratford, is probably the most perfect thing of the kind that
ever could have been or can be done. And the picture of Whitefriars,
though it is borrowed to a great extent, and rather anticipated in point
of time, from Shadwell's _Squire of Alsatia_, sixty or seventy years
after date, is of the finest, whilst Sir Mungo Malagrowther[18] all but
deserves the same description. But this most cantankerous knight is not
touched off with the completeness of Dalgetty, or even of Claud Halcro.
Lord Glenvarloch adds, to the insipidity which is the bane of Scott's
good heroes, some rather disagreeable traits which none of them had
hitherto shown. Dalgarno in the same way falls short of his best bad
heroes. Dame Suddlechop suggests, for the first time _un_favourably, a
Shakespearean ancestress, Mistress Quickly, and the story halts and
fails to carry the reader rapidly over the stony path. Even Richie
Moniplies, even Gentle Geordie, good as both are, fall short of their
predecessors. Ten years earlier _The Fortunes of Nigel_ would have been
a miracle, and one might have said, 'If a man begins like this, what
will he do later?' Now, thankless and often uncritical as is the chatter
about 'writing out,' we can hardly compare _Nigel_ with _Guy Mannering_,
or _Rob Roy_, or even _The Abbot_, and not be conscious of something
that (to use a favourite quotation of Scott's own), 'doth appropinque an
end,' though an end as yet afar off. The 'bottom of the sack,' as the
French say, is a long way from us; but it is within measurable distance.

Even a friendly critic must admit that this distance seemed to be
alarmingly shortened by _Peveril of the Peak_ (January 1823), which
among the full-sized novels seems to me quite his least good book, worse
even than 'dotages,' as they are sometimes thought, like _Anne of
Geierstein_ and _Count Robert_. No one has defended the story, which,
languid as it is, is made worse by the long gaps between the passages
that ought to be interesting, and by a (for Scott) quite abnormal and
portentous absence of really characteristic characters. Lockhart pleads
for some of these, but I fear the plea can hardly be admitted. I imagine
that those who read Scott pretty regularly are always sorely tempted to
skip _Peveril_ altogether, and that when they do read it, they find the
chariot wheels drive with a heaviness of which elsewhere they are
entirely unconscious.

But in the same year (1823), _Quentin Durw