The domestic novel, even when its art is perfect,
gives little but pleasure at the best; at the worst it is simply
scandal idealized.
Scott often confessed his contempt for his own heroes. He said of
Edward Waverley, for instance, that he was "a sneaking piece of
imbecility," and that "if he had married Flora, she would have set him
up upon the chimney-piece as Count Borowlaski's wife used to do with
him. I am a bad hand at depicting a hero, properly so called, and
have an unfortunate propensity for the dubious characters of
borderers, buccaneers, highland robbers, and all others of a
Robin-Hood description."[33] In another letter he says, "My rogue
always, in despite of me, turns out my hero."[34] And it seems very
likely that in most of the situations Scott describes so well, his own
course would have been that of his wilder impulses, and not that of
his reason. Assuredly he would never have stopped hesitating on the
line between opposite courses as his Waverleys, his Mortons, his
Osbaldistones do. Whenever he was really involved in a party strife,
he flung prudence and impartiality to the winds, and went in like the
hearty partisan which his strong impulses made of him.
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