ws the _hysterica passio_ of poor
Lear, but "I had scarce given vent to my feelings in this paroxysm ere I
was ashamed of my weakness."

These were men and women who knew how to love, and how to live.
All men who read "Rob Roy" are innocent rivals of Frank Osbaldistone.
Di Vernon holds her place in our hearts with Rosalind, and these airy
affections, like the actual emotions which they mimic, are not matters
for words. This lady, so gay, so brave, so witty and fearless, so tender
and true, who "endured trials which might have dignified the history of a
martyr, . . . who spent the day in darkness and the night in vigil, and
never breathed a murmur of weakness or complaint," is as immortal in
men's memories as the actual heroine of the White Rose, Flora Macdonald.
Her place is with Helen and Antigone, with Rosalind and Imogen, the
deathless daughters of dreams. She brightens the world as she passes, and
our own hearts tell us all the story when Osbaldistone says, "You know
how I lamented her."

In the central interest, which, for once, is the interest of love, "Rob
Roy" attains the nobility, the reserve, the grave dignity of the highest
art. It is not easy to believe that Frank Osbaldistone is worthy of his
lady; but here no man is a fair judge. In the four novels--"Waverley,"
"Guy Mannering," "The Antiquary," and "Rob Roy"--which we have studied,
the hero has always been a young poet. Waverley versified; so did
Mannering; Lovel "had attempted a few lyrical pieces;" and, in
Osbaldistone's rhymes, Scott parodied his own

blast of that dread horn
On Fontarabian echoes borne.

All the heroes, then, have been poets, and Osbaldistone's youth may have
been suggested by Scott's memories of his own, and of the father who
"feared that he would never be better than a gangrel scrapegut." Like
Henry Morton, in "Old Mortality," Frank Osbaldistone is on the political
side taken by Scott's judgment, not by his emotions. To make Di Vernon
convert him to Jacobitism would have been to repeat the story of
Waverley. Still, he would have been more sympathetic if he had been
converted. He certainly does not lack spirit, as a sportsman, or "on an
occasion," as Sir William Hope says in "The Scots' Fencing Master," when
he encounters Rashleigh in the college gardens. Frank, in short, is all
that a hero should be, and is glorified by his affection.

Of the other characters, perhaps Rob Roy is