" "Often,"
Ballantyne goes on, "has the Author of 'Waverley' used such language to
me; and I knew that I gratified him most when I could say, 'Positively,
this is equal to Miss Edgeworth.'"
Thus Scott's own taste was catholic: and in this he was particularly
unlike the modern novelists, who proclaim, from both sides of the
Atlantic, that only in their own methods, and in sharing their own
exclusive tastes, is literary salvation. The prince of Romance was no
one-sided romanticiste; his ear was open to all fiction good in its kind.
His generosity made him think Miss Edgeworth's persons more alive than
his own. To his own romances he preferred Mrs. Shelley's "Frankenstein."
[Scott reviewed "Frankenstein" in 1818. Mr. Shelley had sent it with a
brief note, it, which he said that it was the work of a friend, and that
he had only seen it through the press. Sir Walter passed the hook on to
Mr. Murritt, who, in reply, gave Scott a brief and not very accurate
history of Shelley. Sir Walter then wrote a most favourable review of
"Frankenstein" in "Blackwood's Magazine," observing that it was
attributed to Mr. Percy Bysshe Shelley, a son-in-law of Mr.
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