ggerated praise bestowed upon
Smollett, gives much of their effectiveness to the criticisms. The
quality appears elsewhere in Scott's critical work, but it is perhaps
especially noticeable here. For example, we find this dictum: "There is
no book in existence, in which so much of the human character, under all
its various shades and phases, is described in so few words, as in the
_Diable Boiteux_."[205] The illustration is perhaps a trifle extreme,
for Scott is not often really dogmatic. From this point of view as from
others we naturally make the comparison with Johnson's _Lives of the
Poets_, and we find that without being so sententious, so admirably
compact in style, Scott is also not so dictatorial.

We cannot accuse Scott of liking any one kind of novel to the exclusion
of others. He ranks _Clarissa Harlowe_ very high;[206] he says _Tom
Jones_ is "truth and human nature itself."[207] _The Vicar of Wakefield_
he calls "one of the most delicious morsels of fictitious composition on
which the human mind was ever employed." "We return to it again and
again," he says, "and bless the memory of an author who contrives so
well to reconcile us to human nature."[208] He praises _Tristram
Shandy_, calling Uncle Toby and his faithful Squire, "the most
delightful characters in the work, or perhaps in any other."[209] The
quiet fictions of Maria Edgeworth and Jane Austen, the exciting tales of
Mrs. Radcliffe, the sentiment of Sterne, even the satires of Bage,--all
pleased him in one way or another. Scott's autobiography contains the
following comment on his boyish tastes in the matter of novels: "The
whole Jemmy and Jenny Jessamy tribe I abhorred, and it required the art
of Burney, or the feeling of Mackenzie, to fix my attention upon a
domestic tale. But all that was adventurous and romantic I devoured
without much discrimination."[210] In later life he learned to exercise
his judgment in regard to stories of adventure not less than those of
the "domestic" sort, and perhaps the liking for quiet tales grew upon
him; at any rate his taste seems remarkably catholic.

The most interesting portions of the _Lives of the Novelists_ are those
which show us, by the frequent recurrence of the same subjects, what
parts of the theory of novel-writing had particularly engaged Scott's
attention. For example we find him discussing, most fully in the _Life
of Fielding_, the reasons why a successful novelist is likely not to be
a successful p