ill pay to this young lady
that attention which is due to misfortune and virtue." "Certainly, sir.
Is my future friend red-haired?" Miss Mannering is very capable of
listening to Brown's flageolet from the balcony, but not of accompanying
Brown, should he desire it, in the boat. As for Brown himself, he is one
of Sir Walter's usual young men,--"brave, handsome, not too clever,"--the
despair of their humorous creator. "Once you come to forty year," as
Thackeray sings, "then you'll know that a lad is an ass;" and Scott had
come to that age, and perhaps entertained that theory of a jeune premier
when he wrote "Guy Mannering." In that novel, as always, he was most
himself when dealing either with homely Scottish characters of everyday
life, with exaggerated types of humorous absurdity, and with wildly
adventurous banditti, who appealed to the old strain of the Border reiver
in his blood. The wandering plot of "Guy Mannering" enabled him to
introduce examples of all these sorts. The good-humoured, dull, dawdling
Ellangowan, a laird half dwindled to a yeoman, is a sketch absolutely
accurate, and wonderfully touched with pathos. The landladies, Mrs.
MacCandlish and Tib Mumps, are little masterpieces; so is Mac-Morlan, the
foil to Glossin; and so is Pleydell, allowing for the manner of the age.
Glossin himself is best when least villanous. Sir Robert Hazlewood is
hardly a success. But as to Jock Jabos, a Southern Scot may say that he
knows Jock Jabos in the flesh, so persistent is the type of that
charioteer. It is partly Scott's good fortune, partly it is his evil
luck, to be so inimitably and intimately true in his pictures of Scottish
character. This wins the heart of his countrymen, indeed; but the
stranger can never know how good Scott really is, any more than a
Frenchman can appreciate Falstaff. Thus the alien may be vexed by what he
thinks the mere clannish enthusiasm of praise, in Scott's countrymen.
Every little sketch of a passing face is exquisite in Scott's work, when
he is at his best. For example, Dandie Dinmont's children are only
indicated "with a dusty roll of the brush;" but we recognize at once the
large, shy, kindly families of the Border. Dandie himself, as the
"Edinburgh Review" said (1817), "is beyond all question the best rustic
portrait that has ever yet been exhibited to the public,--the most
honourable to rustics, and the most creditable to the heart as well as to
the genius of the Author, the truest to