English romance, _Kenilworth_, to his sister, and he also remembers
David Deans, a person most intensely and peculiarly Scots.

One may distinguish the Scotch novels, which only their author could
have written, from novels like _Peveril of the Peak_ or _Anne of
Geierstein_, which may be thought to resemble rather too closely the
imitations of Scott, the ordinary historical novel as it was written by
Scott's successors. But though the formula of the conventional
historical novel may have been drawn from the less idiomatic group, it
was not this that chiefly made Scott's reputation. His fame and
influence were achieved through the whole mass of his immense and varied
work; and the Scots dialect and humours, which make so large a part of
his resources when he is putting out all his power, though they have
their difficulties for readers outside of Scotland, were no real
hindrances in the way of the Scotch novels: Dandie Dinmont and Bailie
Nicol Jarvie, Cuddie Headrigg and Andrew Fairservice were not ignored or
forgotten, even where _Ivanhoe_ or _The Talisman_ might have the
preference as being more conformable to the general mind of novel
readers.

The paradox remains: that the most successful novelist of the whole
world should have had his home and found his strength in a country with
a language of its own, barely intelligible, frequently repulsive to its
nearest neighbours, a language none the more likely to win favour when
the manners or ideas of the country were taken into consideration as
well.

The critics who refuse to see much good in Scott, for the most part
ignore the foundations of his work. Thus Stendhal, who acknowledges
Scott's position as representative of his age, the one really great,
universally popular, author of his day, does not recognise in Scott's
imagination much more than trappings and tournaments, the furniture of
the regular historical novel. He compares Scott's novels with _La
Princesse de Cleves_, and asks which is more to be praised, the author
who understands and reveals the human heart, or the descriptive
historian who can fill pages with unessential details but is afraid of
the passions.

In which it seems to be assumed that Scott, when he gave his attention
to the background and the appropriate dresses, was neglecting the
dramatic truth of his characters and their expression. Scott, it may be
observed, had, in his own reflexions on the art of novel-writing, taken
notice of different k