Ce merite historique a cause un grand plaisir:  je ne le nie pas, mais c’est ce merite historique qui se fanera le premier. . . .  Dans 146 ans, Sir Walter Scott ne sera pas a la hauteur ou Corneille nous apparait 146 ans apres sa mort.”  “To write a modern romance of chivalry.” says Jeffrey, in his review of “Marmion” in the Edinburgh, “seems to be much such a phantasy as to build a modern abbey or an English pagoda. . . . [Scott’s] genius, seconded by the omnipotence of fashion, has brought chivalry again into temporary favor.  Fine ladies and gentlemen now talk, indeed, of donjons, keeps, tabards, ’scutcheons, tressures, caps of maintenance, portcullises, wimples, and we know not what besides; just as they did, in the days of Dr. Darwin’s popularity, of gnomes, sylphs, oxygen, gossamer, polygynia, and polyandria.  That fashion, however, passed rapidly away, and Mr. Scott should take care that a different sort of pedantry,” etc.

[41] For an exhaustive review of Scott’s influence on the evolution of historical fiction in France, consult Maigron, “Le Roman Historique,” etc.  A longish passage from this work will be found at the end of the present chapter.  For English imitators and successors of the Waverley Novels, see Cross, “Development of the English Novel,” pp. 136-48.  See also De Quincey’s “Literary Reminiscences,” vol. iii., for an amusing account of “Walladmor” (1824), a pretended German translation of a non-existent Waverley novel.

[42] “Racine et Shakespeare.”

[43] “Don Quixote.”

[44] “Sir Walter Scott.”

[45] “Dix ans d’etudes historiques”:  preface.

[46] Walter Bagehot says that “Ivanhoe” “describes the Middle Ages as we should have wished them to be,” ignoring their discomforts and harsh barbarism.  “Every boy has heard of tournaments and has a firm persuasion that in an age of tournaments life was thoroughly well understood.  A martial society where men fought hand to hand on good horses with large lances,” etc. ("The Waverley Novels").

[47] “Of enthusiasm in religion Scott always spoke very severely. . . .  I do not think there is a single study in all his romances of what may be fairly called a pre-eminently spiritual character” (R.  H. Hutton:  “Sir Walter Scott,” p. 126).

[48] “Unopposed, the Catholic superstition may sink to dust, with all its absurd ritual and solemnities.  Still it is an awful risk.  The world is in fact as silly as ever, and a good competence of nonsense will always find believers.” ("Diary” for 1829).

[49] See vol. i., p. 42.  “We almost envy the credulity of those who in the gentle moonlight of a summer night in England, amid the tangled glades of a deep forest, or the turfy swell of her romantic commons, could fancy they saw the fairies tracing their sportive ring.  But it is in vain to regret illusions which, however engaging, must of necessity yield their place before the increase of knowledge,