But Scott, of course, had even less in common with the peeper
and botanizer on maidens' hearts than with the wildest romanticist. He
considered that "a want of story is always fatal to a book the first
reading, and it is well if it gets a chance of a second." From him "Pride
and Prejudice" got a chance of three readings at least. This generous
universality of taste, in addition to all his other qualities of humour
and poetry, enabled Scott to raise the novel from its decadence, and to
make the dry bones of history live again in his tales. With Charles
Edward at Holyrood, as Mr. Senior wrote in the "Quarterly Review," "we
are in the lofty region of romance. In any other hands than those of Sir
Walter Scott, the language and conduct of those great people would have
been as dignified as their situations. We should have heard nothing of
the hero in his new costume 'majoring afore the muckle pier-glass,' of
his arrest by the hint of the Candlestick, of his examination by the
well-powdered Major Melville, or of his fears of being informed against
by Mrs. Nosebag." In short, "while the leading persons and events are as
remote from ordinary life as the inventions of Scudery, the picture of
human nature is as faithful as could have been given by Fielding or Le
Sage.
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