ve care or haste. There are
differences, and even great differences, of course, ascribable to the
less or greater suitability of the subject chosen to Scott's genius,
but I can find no trace of the sort of cause to which Mr. Carlyle
refers. Thus, few, I suppose, would hesitate to say that while _Old
Mortality_ is very near, if not quite, the finest of Scott's works,
_The Black Dwarf_ is not far from the other end of the scale. Yet the
two were written in immediate succession (_The Black Dwarf_ being the
first of the two), and were published together, as the first series of
_Tales of my Landlord_, in 1816. Nor do I think that any competent
critic would find any clear deterioration of quality in the novels of
the later years,--excepting of course the two written after the stroke
of paralysis. It is true, of course, that some of the subjects which
most powerfully stirred his imagination were among his earlier themes,
and that he could not effectually use the same subject twice, though
he now and then tried it. But making allowance for this
consideration, the imaginative power of the novels is as astonishingly
_even_ as the rate of composition itself. For my own part, I greatly
prefer _The Fortunes of Nigel_ (which was written in 1822) to
_Waverley_ which was begun in 1805, and finished in 1814, and though
very many better critics would probably decidedly disagree, I do not
think that any of them would consider this preference grotesque or
purely capricious. Indeed, though _Anne of Geierstein_,--the last
composed before Scott's stroke,--would hardly seem to any careful
judge the equal of _Waverley_, I do not much doubt that if it had
appeared in place of _Waverley_, it would have excited very nearly as
much interest and admiration; nor that had _Waverley_ appeared in
1829, in place of _Anne of Geierstein_, it would have failed to excite
very much more. In these fourteen most effective years of Scott's
literary life, during which he wrote twenty-three novels besides
shorter tales, the best stories appear to have been on the whole the
most rapidly written, probably because they took the strongest hold of
the author's imagination.

Till near the close of his career as an author, Scott never avowed his
responsibility for any of these series of novels, and even took some
pains to mystify the public as to the identity between the author of
_Waverley_ and the author of _Tales of my Landlord_. The care with
which the secret was ke