This is the inevitable result of a novel based on a prediction.
Either you have to leap some twenty years just when you are becoming familiar with the persons, or you have to begin in the midst of the events foreseen, and then make a tedious return to explain the prophecy.
Again, it was necessary for Scott to sacrifice Frank Kennedy, who is rather a taking adventurer, like Bothwell in "Old Mortality." Readers regret the necessity which kills Kennedy.

The whole fortunes of Vanbeest Brown, his duel with the colonel, and his fortunate appearance in the nick of time, seem too rich in coincidences: still, as the Dormont case and the Ormiston case have shown, coincidences as unlooked for do occur.
A fastidious critic has found fault with Brown's flageolet.

It is a modest instrument; but what was he to play upon,--a lute, a concertina, a barrel-organ?
The characters of the young ladies have not always been applauded.

Taste, in the matter of heroines, varies greatly; Sir Walter had no high opinion of his own skill in delineating them.

But Julia Mannering is probably a masterly picture of a girl of that age,--a girl with some silliness and more gaiety, with wit, love of banter, and, in the last resort, sense and good feeling.