" 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.
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