t
Drelincourt's _Defence against the Fear of Death_ is recommended by the
apparition. "Drelincourt's book," he says, "being neglected, lay a dead
stock on the hands of the publisher. In this emergency he applied to De
Foe to assist him (by dint of such means as were then, as well as now,
pretty well understood in the literary world) in rescuing the
unfortunate book from the literary death to which general neglect seemed
about to consign it." Scott goes on to assert that the story was simply
a consummately clever advertising device. He may have found the germ of
his hypothesis in a bookseller's tradition, but he states it as an
assured fact, and doubtless believed it firmly because it seemed so
beautifully reasonable. His explanation became the basis of later
statements on the subject, and now obliges everyone who discusses Defoe
to supply a contradiction; for the truth is that Drelincourt's book was
so highly popular as to have gone through several editions before the
ghost of Mrs. Veal mentioned it. Moreover, if Scott's little tale was
fictitious, Defoe's, on the other hand, was really a reporter's version
of an experience actually related by the person to whom he assigns it,
and his skill in achieving verisimilitude was perhaps in this case less
wonderful than his critics have generally supposed.[214]

On the subject of realism, Scott was not in general very rigid. In his
_Life of Richardson_ he says: "It is unfair to tax an author too
severely upon improbabilities, without conceding which his story could
have no existence; and we have the less title to do so, because, in the
history of real life, that which is actually true bears often very
little resemblance to that which is probable."[215] But this is perhaps
only a plea for one kind of realism. He also refers to the question of
historical "keening," and concludes that it is possible to have so much
accuracy that the public will refuse to be interested, as _Lear_ would
hardly be popular on the stage if the hero were represented in the
bearskin and paint which a Briton of his time doubtless wore.[216]

The motive of the novel is a subject which naturally engages the
attention of the novelist-critic. Romantic fiction, he thinks may have
sufficient justification if it acts as an opiate for tired spirits. A
significant antithesis between his point of view in this matter and the
more common attitude taken by critics in his time is illustrated by two
reviews of Mrs. She