When we hear an Adelaise of the mid-twelfth century asking whether she does not receive her education from her mamma, the necessary "suspension of disbelief" becomes impossible.
But these now most obvious truths were not obvious at all between 1780 and 1810: and it is perhaps the greatest evidence of Scott's genius that half, but by no means quite, unconsciously he saw them, and that he has made everybody see them since.

It was undoubtedly fortunate that he began novel-writing so late: for earlier even he might have been caught in the errors of the time.

But when he did begin, he had not only reached middle life and matured his considerable original critical faculty--criticism and wine are the only things that even the "kind calm years" may be absolutely trusted to improve if there is any original goodness in them--but he had other advantages.

He had read, if not with minute accuracy, very widely indeed: and he possessed, as Lord Morley has well said, "the genius of history" in a degree which perhaps no merely meticulous scholar has ever reached, and which was not exceeded in _quality_ even by the greatest historians such as Gibbon.

He had an almost unmatched combination of common sense with poetic imagination, of knowledge of the world with knowledge of letters.