This was a pleasant task, charmingly done.
Indeed we may call it the last of those great editorial labors by which Scott's fame might live unsupported by anything else.

First came the _Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border_, then the editions of Dryden and Swift.

Next we may count the _Lives of the Novelists_, even in the fragmentary state in which the failure of the _Novelists' Library_ left them; and finally the _Opus Magnum_.

When, in addition, we remember the mass of his critical work written for periodicals, and the number of minor volumes he edited, it becomes evident that a study of Scott which disregards this part of his work can present only a one-sided view of his achievement.

And the qualities of his abundant criticism, especially its large fresh sanity, seem to make it worthy of closer analysis than it usually receives, not only because it helps to reveal Scott's genius, but also on account of the historical and ethical importance which always attaches to the ideals, literary and other, of a noble man and a great writer..