He had shown himself to be possessed of the secret of semi-historical narrative itself in half a dozen remarkable verse romances, and therefore had less to do in engineering the prose romance.

Last of all, he had seen what to avoid--not merely in his editing of Strutt's _Queenhoo Hall_ (a valuable property-room for the novel, but nothing of a real novel), but in his reading of the failures of his predecessors and contemporaries.

The very beginning of _Waverley_ itself (which most people skip) is invaluable, because it shows us that at the time he wrote it (which, it need hardly be said, was a long time before its completion) he had not the knowledge or the courage to strike straight out into the stream of action and conversation, but troubled himself with accumulating bladders and arranging ropes for the possible salvation of his narrative if it got into difficulties.

Very soon he knew that it would not get into difficulties: and away he went.
It ought not to be necessary, but from some symptoms it may be desirable, to point out that Scott is very far from being an historical novelist only.

An acute French critic, well acquainted with both literatures, once went so far as to say that there were a good many professed "philosophical" novels which did not contain such keen psychology as Scott's: and I would undertake to show a good deal of cause on this side.