Bradwardine becomes a nuisance, and as for Sir Piercie Shafton, he is beyond endurance.

Like some other Scotchmen of genius, Scott twanged away at any effective chord till it more than lost its expressiveness.

But in dry humour, and in that higher humour which skilfully blends the ludicrous and the pathetic, so that it is hardly possible to separate between smiles and tears, Scott is a master.

His canny innkeeper, who, having sent away all the peasemeal to the camp of the Covenanters, and all the oatmeal (with deep professions of duty) to the castle and its cavaliers, in compliance with the requisitions sent to him on each side, admits with a sigh to his daughter that "they maun gar wheat flour serve themsels for a blink,"-- his firm of solicitors, Greenhorn and Grinderson, whose senior partner writes respectfully to clients in prosperity, and whose junior partner writes familiarly to those in adversity,--his arbitrary nabob who asks how the devil any one should be able to mix spices so well "as one who has been where they grow;"-- his little ragamuffin who indignantly denies that he has broken his promise not to gamble away his sixpences at pitch-and-toss because he has gambled them away at "neevie-neevie-nick-nack,"-- and similar figures abound in his tales,--are all creations which make one laugh inwardly as we read.

But he has a much higher humour still, that inimitable power of shading off ignorance into knowledge and simplicity into wisdom, which makes his picture of Jeanie Deans, for instance, so humorous as well as so affecting.