have more. The book, of course, has certain obvious
critical faults--which are not in the least what made Borrow object to
it. Although Scott, and apparently Ballantyne, liked the catastrophe, it
has always seemed to me one of his worst examples of 'huddling up.' For
it is historically and dramatically impossible that Cromwell should
change his mind, or that Pearson and Robbins should wish to thwart
severity which, considering the death of Humgudgeon, had a good deal
more excuse than Oliver often thought necessary. Nor may the usual, and
perhaps a little more than the usual, shortcomings in construction be
denied. But as of old, and even more than on some occasions of old, the
excellences of character, description, dialogue, and incident are so
great as to atone over and over again for defects of the expected kind.
If Everard has something of that unlucky quality which the author
recognised in Malcolm Graeme when he said, 'I ducked him in the lake to
give him something to do; but wet or dry I could make nothing of him,'
Alice is quite of the better class of his heroines; and from her we
ascend to personages in whose case there is very little need of apology
and proviso. Sir Henry Lee, Wildrake, Cromwell himself, Charles, may not
satisfy others, but I am quite content with them; and the famous scene
where Wildrake is a witness to Oliver's half-confession seems to me one
of its author's greatest serious efforts. Trusty Tomkins, perhaps, might
have been a little better; he comes somewhat under the ban of some
unfavourable remarks which Reginald Heber makes in his diary on this
class of Scott's figures, though the good bishop seems to me to have
been rather too severe. But the pictures of Woodstock Palace and Park
have that indescribable and vivid charm which Scott, without using any
of the 'realist' minuteness or 'impressionist' contortions of later
days, has the faculty of communicating to such things. For myself, I can
say--and I am sure I may speak for hundreds--that Tullyveolan,
Ellangowan, the Bewcastle moor where Bertram rescued Dandie,
Clerihugh's, Monkbarns (I do not see Knockwinnock so clearly), the home
of the Osbaldistones, and the district from Aberfoyle to Loch Ard, the
moors round Drumclog, Torquilstone, and, not to make the list tedious, a
hundred other places, including Woodstock itself, are as real as if I
had walked over every inch of the ground and sat in every room of the
houses. In some cases I have nev