But this last scene no doubt is more in Scott's way.

He can always paint women in their more masculine moods.

Where he frequently fails is in the attempt to indicate the finer shades of women's nature.

In Amy Robsart herself, for example, he is by no means generally successful, though in an early scene her childish delight in the various orders and decorations of her husband is painted with much freshness and delicacy.

But wherever, as in the case of queens, Scott can get a telling hint from actual history, he can always so use it as to make history itself seem dim to the equivalent for it which he gives us.
And yet, as every one knows, Scott was excessively free in his manipulations of history for the purposes of romance.