Spain, of Fouqué in Germany, of Manzoni in Italy, and of Tolstoi in Russia, was forty-three years old when his first novel was completed. That first novel was Waverley. It came from the press in 1814. It was Scott's intention, when he began the Waverley novels, to write of his own day and country, like Henry Fielding, but he quickly gave up that intention and determined to entertain by writing tales of other times, and, soon, even of other lands, than his own. To do this was a hard task, for in the early nineteenth century there was little knowledge of history and less interest in it. This lack of knowledge and this lack of interest Scott had to break down, and he did so. He was able to do this because he was a great man, and because he wrote his great romantic heart right into his characters. He communicated his own life to them, though he was unable, as Jane Austen was able, to make all his characters vitally act. It was Sir Walter doing and speaking through most of his characters that attracted and held the reading world of a century ago, and does so still, in at least a third of his twenty-nine novels.

The twenty-nine novels easily fall into three groups, if we look at the subject matter from the point of view of a combination of time principle and geographic principle, for up to about 1819 Scott wrote chiefly (1) of Scotland in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, then (2) until about 1823 of England and the middle ages, when (3) in Quentin Durward he turned to the continent of Europe for subject matter. Guy Mannering and The Antiquary are considered by most critical readers to-day the best of the twenty-nine books, though many votes are cast for Old Mortality, The Abbot, The Bride of Lammermoor, and the ever popular Ivanhoe.

The first group of the novels includes Waverley, Guy Mannering, The Antiquary, The Black Dwarf, Old Mortality, Rob Roy, The Heart of Midlothian, The Bride of Lammermoor, and The

Legend of Montrose. As is the usual fact, the greatest of this author's works came among the earlier ones. Having created his own public among readers, an author is expected to satisfy their hunger for more works of the same kind, but it is seldom that he can rise again to the heights to which he rose when he was writing to please himself rather than the public. Waverley continues to reflect the interest in tales of wonder which had absorbed Scott during his period of poetry. Guy Mannering, or the Astrologer is a masterpiece because of its richly humorous portrayal of character. The Antiquary is like Guy Mannering in its creation of the characters Oldbuck and Ochiltree. It should be noticed that these two novels were not historical, as Waverley had attempted to be. The Black Dwarf is of less importance than any of the three novels preceding it; but it was quickly followed by the famous Old Mortality. This book and Quentin Durward, to be mentioned again in the third group, were the foundations of the so-called historical novel. Rob Roy was the one of Scott's books which more than any other helped finally to unite the Highlands and the Lowlands of Scotland in sympathetic friendliness after centuries of hostility. The Heart of Midlothian is the story of Jeanie Deans, the finest of Scott's women characters. Following this came The Bride of Lammermoor, Scott's really great novel among his trials at profound tragedy, often compared with Romeo and Juliet because of the tragedy centering about the love motive, and truly worthy to be compared, in its somberness and dreadful gloom, with Shakespeare's King Lear or Balzac's Père Goriot. The Legend of Montrose ends this first group.

The second group consists of Ivanhoe, The Monastery, The Abbot, Kenilworth, The Pirate, The Fortunes of Nigel, and Peveril of the Peak. Ivanhoe is one of the best of all plot-novels, perhaps less spontaneously created, therefore, than many of the

rest by Scott. Doubtless it has been read by more people than any of his others. The Monastery and The Abbot are glorious books. They deal with the fascinating story of Mary Queen of Scots, and yet are not quite so sympathetic with the life of her century as are the books which deal with the life of the two centuries following. Kenilworth presents many celebrated pictures of Queen Elizabeth and her courtiers. The Pirate is Scott's sea story. The Fortunes of Nigel contains what is usually acknowledged to be Sir Walter's finest historical portrait, that of James VI of Scotland and I of England. The inconsistencies of life were not quite so captivating to Scott as to Jane Austen, but in the character of King James they are handled at their richest and best, or worst. Peveril of the Peak is very vigorous and vivacious in many of its scenes, yet was not so favorably received by its readers as any of the stories which had preceded it, because in it the author failed to sustain the reputation for naturalism which he had so firmly established.

The third group, beginning in 1823, comprises Quentin Durward, St. Ronan's Well, Redgauntlet, The Betrothed, The Talisman, Woodstock, The Highland Widow, The Two Drovers, The Surgeon's Daughter, The Fair Maid of Perth, Anne of Geierstein, Count Robert of Paris, and Castle Dangerous. Quentin Durward, along with Old Mortality (in the first group), is to be considered as forever assuring in fiction the place of the historical novel. It carries its readers across the channel, and enters a new field for Scott, that of a foreign land. The scene is laid in France at the court of Louis XI. The sensation the book created in Paris was as big as that created by Waverley in Edinburgh and by Ivanhoe (an English "Scotch-novel ") in London. Goethe, at Weimar, said, " All is great in the Waverley novels; material, effect, characters, execution." St. Ronan's Well was a novel of