Like Thackeray, he had been
thrilled by Vivaidi in the Inquisition, and he was not the man to hide
his gratitude because his author was now out of fashion.
Thus we see that Scott, when he began "Waverley" in 1805, brought to his
labour no hard-and-fast theory of the art of fiction, but a kindly
readiness to be pleased, and to find good in everything. He brought his
wide knowledge of contemporary Scottish life "from the peer to the
ploughman;" he brought his well-digested wealth of antiquarian lore, and
the poetic skill which had just been busied with the "Lay of the Last
Minstrel," and was still to be occupied, ere he finished his interrupted
novel, with "Marmion," "The Lady of the Lake," "Rokeby," and "The Lord of
the Isles." The comparative failure of the last-named no doubt
strengthened his determination to try prose romance. He had never cared
mach for his own poems, he says, Byron had outdone him in popularity, and
the Muse--"the Good Demon" who once deserted Herrick--came now less
eagerly to his call. It is curiously difficult to disentangle the
statements about the composition of "Waverley." Our first authority, of
course, is Scott's own account, given in the General Preface to the
Edition of 1829.
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