arge assemblage of manly and sagacious
remarks on human life and manners,"[201] wrote the _Quarterly_ reviewer.

The writers considered were all British, with the exception of LeSage.
The choice, or at least the arrangement, seems more or less haphazard.
Richardson, Fielding, and Smollett naturally began the group, and Sterne
followed after an interval. Johnson and Goldsmith were treated briefly,
for the prefaces were to be proportioned to the amount of work by each
author included in the text. Horace Walpole, Clara Reeve, and Mrs.
Radcliffe represented the Gothic romance. Charles Johnstone, Robert
Bage, and Richard Cumberland were among the inferior writers included.
Henry Mackenzie, who was still living and was a personal friend of
Scott, completes the list so far as it went before the series was
terminated by the publisher's death. When Scott's _Miscellaneous Prose
Works_ were collected he added the lives of Charlotte Smith and Defoe,
but in each of these cases the biographical portion was by another hand,
the criticism being his own.[202]

The study of the novel as a _genre_ was naturally undeveloped at that
time. Dunlop's _History of Prose Fiction_ had appeared in 1814,
evidently a much more ambitious attempt than Scott's; but Scott could
treat the British novelists with comparative freedom from the trammels
of any established precedent. Of course his position as one who had
struck out a wonderful new path in the writing of novels gave to his
reflections on other novelists a very special interest. The _Lives of
the Novelists_ are not to be neglected even now, and this is the more to
be insisted on because the criticism of novels has been practiced with
increasing zeal since Scott himself has become a classic and since his
successors have made this field of literature more varied and popular,
if not greater, than the first masters made it. A recent writer on
eighteenth century literature says: "By far the best criticism of the
eighteenth century novelists will be found in the prefatory notices
contributed by Scott to Ballantyne's _Novelists' Library_."[203] But the
same writer adds: "Sir Walter Scott, indeed, considered _Fathom_
superior to _Jonathan Wild_, an opinion which must always remain one of
the mysteries of criticism."[204]

This comment indicates that there was no lack of assuredness in Scott's
treatment, and we do indeed find a very pleasant tone of competence
which, though liable to error as in the exa