the intervals of artificial
labour on _Ivanhoe_. 'It was a relief,' he said, 'to interlay the
scenery most familiar to me[168] with the strange world for which I had
to draw so much on imagination.'[169] Through all the closing scenes of
the second he is raised to his own true level by his love for the
queen. And within the code of Scott's work to which I am about to appeal
for illustration of his essential powers, I accept the _Monastery_ and
_Abbot_, and reject from it the remaining four of this group.

The last series contains two quite noble ones, _Redgauntlet_ and
_Nigel_; two of very high value, _Durward_ and _Woodstock_; the slovenly
and diffuse _Peveril_, written for the trade; the sickly _Tales of the
Crusaders_, and the entirely broken and diseased _St. Ronan's Well_.
This last I throw out of count altogether, and of the rest, accept only
the four first named as sound work; so that the list of the novels in
which I propose to examine his methods and ideal standards, reduces
itself to these following twelve (named in order of production):
_Waverley_, _Guy Mannering_, the _Antiquary_, _Rob Roy_, _Old
Mortality_, the _Heart of Midlothian_, the _Monastery_, the _Abbot_, the
_Fortunes of Nigel_, _Quentin Durward_, and _Woodstock_.[170]

It is, however, too late to enter on my subject in this article, which I
may fitly close by pointing out some of the merely verbal
characteristics of his style, illustrative in little ways of the
questions we have been examining, and chiefly of the one which may be
most embarrassing to many readers, the difference, namely, between
character and disease.

One quite distinctive charm in the Waverleys is their modified use of
the Scottish dialect; but it has not generally been observed, either by
their imitators, or the authors of different taste who have written for
a later public, that there is a difference between the dialect of a
language, and its corruption.

A dialect is formed in any district where there are persons of
intelligence enough to use the language itself in all its fineness and
force, but under the particular conditions of life, climate, and temper,
which introduce words peculiar to the scenery, forms of word and idioms
of sentence peculiar to the race, and pronunciations indicative of their
character and disposition.

Thus 'burn' (of a streamlet) is a word possible only in a country where
there are brightly running waters, 'lassie,' a word possible only where