self which
found little reflection in the great limpid mirror which Scott held up
to nature. The beginning of Scott's chief and greatest work was as
fortuitous, as accidental (if we may use the word), as the poetry. He
took up by some passing impulse the idea of a prose story on the events
of the 'forty-five, which perhaps he considered too recent to be treated
in poetry; wrote (everybody knows the story) half a volume, read it to a
trusted critic, who probably considered it foolish for a man who had
risen to the heights of fame by one kind of composition to risk himself
now with another. It is very likely that Scott himself was easily moved
to the same opinion. He tossed the MS. into a drawer, and gave it up.
There had been no special motive in the effort, and it cost him nothing
to put it aside, to whistle for his dogs, and go out for a long round by
wood and hill, or to take his gun or rod, or to entertain his
visitors--all of which were more rational, more entertaining, and
altogether important things to do than the writing of a dull story,
which after all was not his line. For years the beginning chapters of
_Waverley_ lay there unknown. They lay very quietly, we may well
believe, not bursting the dull enclosure as they might have done had the
Baron of Bradwardine been yet born; but that good young Waverley was
always a little dull, and might have slept till doomsday had nothing
occurred to disturb his rest. One day, however, some fishing tackle was
wanted for the use of one of Scott's perpetual visitors at
Ashiestiel--not even for himself, for some chance man taking advantage
of the Shirra's open house. Visitor arriving in a good hour! fortunate
sorner, to be thereafter blessed of all men! Let us hope he got just the
lines he wanted and had a good day's sport. For in his search Scott's
eyes lighted upon the bundle of written pages. "Hallo!" he must have
said to himself, "there they are! Let's see if they're as bad as Willie
Erskine thought." In his candid soul he did not think they were very
good, unless it was perhaps the description of Waverley Honour, a great
mild English mansion which he would admire all the more that it was so
unlike Tully Veolan. Perhaps it was the contrast which brought into his
teeming brain a sudden vision of that "Scottish manor-house sixty years
since," which he went off straightway and built in his eighth chapter
with the baron and all his surroundings, which must have been awaiting
imp