Copmanhurst
or of Mr. Pleydell, and the thoroughly solid things they are described
as eating, is one of the most perfect of Scott's poetic touches. In
short, Mr. Stanley Weyman is filled with the conviction that the sole
essence of romance is to move with insatiable rapidity from incident to
incident. In the truer romance of Scott there is more of the sentiment
of "Oh! still delay, thou art so fair"! more of a certain patriarchal
enjoyment of things as they are--of the sword by the side and the
wine-cup in the hand. Romance, indeed, does not consist by any means so
much in experiencing adventures as in being ready for them. How little
the actual boy cares for incidents in comparison to tools and weapons
may be tested by the fact that the most popular story of adventure is
concerned with a man who lived for years on a desert island with two
guns and a sword, which he never had to use on an enemy.

Closely connected with this is one of the charges most commonly brought
against Scott, particularly in his own day--the charge of a fanciful
and monotonous insistence upon the details of armour and costume. The
critic in the _Edinburgh Review_ said indignantly that he could tolerate
a somewhat detailed description of the apparel of Marmion, but when it
came to an equally detailed account of the apparel of his pages and
yeomen the mind could bear it no longer. The only thing to be said about
that critic is that he had never been a little boy. He foolishly
imagined that Scott valued the plume and dagger of Marmion for Marmion's
sake. Not being himself romantic, he could not understand that Scott
valued the plume because it was a plume, and the dagger because it was a
dagger. Like a child, he loved weapons with a manual materialistic love,
as one loves the softness of fur or the coolness of marble. One of the
profound philosophical truths which are almost confined to infants is
this love of things, not for their use or origin, but for their own
inherent characteristics, the child's love of the toughness of wood, the
wetness of water, the magnificent soapiness of soap. So it was with
Scott, who had so much of the child in him. Human beings were perhaps
the principal characters in his stories, but they were certainly not the
only characters. A battle-axe was a person of importance, a castle had a
character and ways of its own. A church bell had a word to say in the
matter. Like a true child, he almost ignored the distinction between