And as regards our present method of estimation, they hardly count at all.
For, in that calculus, the important thing is that Scott, like Miss Austen, at once opened an immense new field to the novelist, and showed how that field was to be cultivated.

The complement-contrast of the pair can need emphasising only to those on whom no emphasis would be likely to impress it: but it may not be quite so evident at once that between them they cover almost the entire possible ground of prose fiction.

The more striking and popular as well as more strictly novel style of Scott naturally attracted most attention at first: indeed it can hardly be said that, for the next thirty years, much attempt was made to follow in Miss Austen's steps, while such attempts as were made were seldom very good.[19] But there is no need to hurry Time: and he generally knows what he is about.

At any rate he had, in and through these two provided--for generations, probably for centuries, to come--patterns and principles for whoso would to follow in prose fiction.
[19] Some work of distinction, actually later than hers in date, is older in kind.

This is the case not only with the later books of her Irish elder sister.