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. But when it came to describing the small differences of
manner, differences not due to external habits, so much as to internal
sentiment or education, or mere domestic circumstance, he was beyond
his proper field.
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