ard_ not only made up for
_Peveril_, but showed Scott's powers to be at least as great as when he
wrote _The Abbot_, if not as great as ever. He has taken some liberties
with history, but no more than he was perfectly entitled to take; he has
paid the historic muse with ample interest for anything she lent him, by
the magnificent sketch of Louis and the fine one of Charles; he has
given a more than passable hero in Quentin, and a very agreeable if not
ravishing heroine in Isabelle. Above all, he has victoriously shown his
old faculty of conducting the story with such a series of enthralling,
even if sometimes episodic passages, that nobody but a pedant of
'construction' would care to inquire too narrowly whether they actually
make a whole. Quentin's meeting with the King and his rescue from
Tristan by the archers; the interviews between Louis and Crevecoeur,
and Louis and the Astrologer; the journey (another of Scott's admirable
journeys); the sack of Schonwaldt, and the feast of the Boar of
Ardennes; Louis in the lion's den at Peronne,--these are things that are
simply of the first order. Nor need the conclusion, which has shocked
some, shock any who do not hold, with critics of the Rymer school, that
'the hero ought always to be successful.' For as Quentin wins Isabelle
at last, what more success need we want? and why should not Le Balafre,
that loyal Leslie, be the instrument of his nephew's good fortune?

The recovery was perfectly well maintained in _St. Ronan's Well_ (still
1823) and _Redgauntlet_ (1824), the last novels of full length before
the downfall. They were also, be it noticed, the first planned (while
_Quentin_ itself was completed) after some early symptoms of apoplectic
seizure, which might, even if they had not been helped by one of the
severest turns of fortune that any man ever experienced, have punished
Scott's daring contempt of ordinary laws in the working of his
brains.[17] The harm done to _St. Ronan's Well_ by the author's
submission to James Ballantyne's Philistine prudery in protesting
against the original story (in which Clara did not discover the cheat
put on her till a later period than the ceremony) is generally
acknowledged. As it is, not merely is the whole thing made a much ado
about nothing,--for no law and no Church in Christendom would have
hesitated to declare the nullity of a marriage which had never been
consummated, and which was celebrated while one of the parties took the
oth