What book of fiction of the present century
can you read twice, with the exception of "Waverley" and "Rob Roy?"
There is "Pelham," it is true, which the writer of these lines has
seen a Jewess reading in the steppe of Debreczin, and which a young
Prussian Baron, a great traveller, whom he met at Constantinople in
'44 told him he always carried in his valise. And, in conclusion,
he will say, in order to show the opinion which he entertains of
the power of Scott as a writer, that he did for the sceptre of the
wretched Pretender what all the kings of Europe could not do for
his body--placed it on the throne of these realms; and for Popery,
what Popes and Cardinals strove in vain to do for three centuries--
brought back its mummeries and nonsense into the temples of the
British Isles.
Scott during his lifetime had a crowd of imitators, who, whether
they wrote history so called--poetry so called--or novels--nobody
would call a book a novel if he could call it anything else--wrote
Charlie o'er the water nonsense; and now that he has been dead
nearly a quarter of a century, there are others daily springing up
who are striving to imitate Scott in his Charlie o'er the water
nonsense--for nonsense it is, even when flowing from his pen.
They, too, must write Jacobite histories, Jacobite songs, and
Jacobite novels, and much the same figure as the scoundrel menials
in the comedy cut when personating their masters, and retailing
their masters' conversation, do they cut as Walter Scotts.
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