Yet he clearly needed the romantic excitement of picturesque scenes and historical interests, too.

I do not think he would ever have gained any brilliant success in the narrower region of the domestic novel.

He said himself, in expressing his admiration of Miss Austen, "The big bow-wow strain I can do myself, like any now going, but the exquisite touch which renders ordinary commonplace things and characters interesting, from the truth of the description and the sentiment, is denied to me." Indeed he tried it to some extent in _St.
Ronan's Well_, and so far as he tried it, I think he failed.

Scott needed a certain largeness of type, a strongly-marked class-life, and, where it was possible, a free, out-of-doors life, for his delineations.

_No_ one could paint beggars and gipsies, and wandering fiddlers, and mercenary soldiers, and peasants and farmers and lawyers, and magistrates, and preachers, and courtiers, and statesmen, and best of all perhaps queens and kings, with anything like his ability.