Large editions were sold in Edinburgh, and when Scott returned from his cruise in the northern islands he found society ringing with his unacknowledged triumph.

Byron, especially, proclaimed his pleasure in "Waverley." It may be curious to recall some of the published reviews of the moment.

Probably no author ever lived so indifferent to published criticism as Scott.

Miss Edgeworth, in one of her letters, reminds him how they had both agreed that writers who cared for the dignity and serenity of their characters should abstain from "that authors' bane-stuff." "As to the herd of critics," Scott wrote to Miss Seward, after publishing "The Lay," "many of those gentlemen appear to me to be a set of tinkers, who, unable to make pots and pans, set up for menders of them." It is probable, therefore, that he was quite unconcerned about the few remarks which Mr.
Gifford, in the "Quarterly Review" (vol.xl., 1814), interspersed among a multitude of extracts, in a notice of "Waverley" manufactured with scissors and paste.

The "Quarterly" recognized "a Scotch Castle Rackrent," but in "a much higher strain." The tale was admitted to possess all the accuracy of history, and all the vivacity of romance.
Scott's second novel, "Guy Mannering," was attacked with some viciousness in the periodical of which he was practically the founder, and already the critic was anxious to repeat what Scott, talking of Pope's censors, calls "the cuckoo cry of written out'!" The notice of "Waverley" in the "Edinburgh Review" by Mr.Jeffrey was not so slight and so unworthy of the topic.