is pressed upon us quite as vividly as
their gallantry and superstitions. And so careful is Sir Walter to
paint the petty pedantries of the Scotch traditional conservatism,
that he will not spare even Charles Edward--of whom he draws so
graceful a picture--the humiliation of submitting to old Bradwardine's
"solemn act of homage," but makes him go through the absurd ceremony
of placing his foot on a cushion to have its brogue unlatched by the
dry old enthusiast of heraldic lore. Indeed it was because Scott so
much enjoyed the contrast between the high sentiment of life and its
dry and often absurd detail, that his imagination found so much freer
a vent in the historical romance, than it ever found in the romantic
poem. Yet he clearly needed the romantic excitement of picturesque
scenes and historical interests, too. I do not think he would ever
have gained any brilliant success in the narrower region of the
domestic novel. He said himself, in expressing his admiration of Miss
Austen, "The big bow-wow strain I can do myself, like any now going,
but the exquisite touch which renders ordinary commonplace things and
characters interesting, from the truth of the description and the
sentiment, is denied to me." Indeed he tried it to some extent in _St.
Ronan's Well_, and so far as he tried it, I think he failed. Scott
needed a certain largeness of type, a strongly-marked class-life, and,
where it was possible, a free, out-of-doors life, for his
delineations. _No_ one could paint beggars and gipsies, and wandering
fiddlers, and mercenary soldiers, and peasants and farmers and
lawyers, and magistrates, and preachers, and courtiers, and statesmen,
and best of all perhaps queens and kings, with anything like his
ability. But when it came to describing the small differences of
manner, differences not due to external habits, so much as to internal
sentiment or education, or mere domestic circumstance, he was beyond
his proper field. In the sketch of the St. Ronan's Spa and the company
at the _table-d'hote_, he is of course somewhere near the mark,--he
was too able a man to fall far short of success in anything he really
gave to the world; but it is not interesting. Miss Austen would have
made Lady Penelope Penfeather a hundred times as amusing. We turn to
Meg Dods and Touchwood, and Cargill, and Captain Jekyl, and Sir Bingo
Binks, and to Clara Mowbray,--i. e. to the lives really moulded by
large and specific causes, for enjoyment, a