The fancy of Sir Walter could not help connecting the two.
If he had given us the English side of the race to Derby, _he would have described the Bank of England paying in sixpences, and also the loves of the cashier_." No one who knows the novels well can question this.

Fergus MacIvor's ways and means, his careful arrangements for receiving subsidies in black mail, are as carefully recorded as his lavish highland hospitalities; and when he sends his silver cup to the Gaelic bard who chaunts his greatness, the faithful historian does not forget to let us know that the cup is his last, and that he is hard-pressed for the generosities of the future.

So too the habitual thievishness of the highlanders is pressed upon us quite as vividly as their gallantry and superstitions.

And so careful is Sir Walter to paint the petty pedantries of the Scotch traditional conservatism, that he will not spare even Charles Edward--of whom he draws so graceful a picture--the humiliation of submitting to old Bradwardine's "solemn act of homage," but makes him go through the absurd ceremony of placing his foot on a cushion to have its brogue unlatched by the dry old enthusiast of heraldic lore.

Indeed it was because Scott so much enjoyed the contrast between the high sentiment of life and its dry and often absurd detail, that his imagination found so much freer a vent in the historical romance, than it ever found in the romantic poem.