he foresaw not that he was losing forever the opportunity of acquiring habits of firm and assiduous application, of gaining the art of controlling, directing, and concentrating the powers of his mind for earnest investigation."[407] It was otherwise with Scott himself.  The result of the wide and desultory reading of his youth, acting upon a remarkably strong memory, was to put him into the position, as he says, of “an ignorant gamester, who kept a good hand until he knew how to play it."[408] So it was that he said of those who followed his lead in writing historical novels, “They may do their fooling with better grace; but I, like Sir Andrew Aguecheek, do it more natural."[409] His knowledge of history and antiquities was that part of his intellectual equipment in which he seemed to take most pride.  He had the highest opinion of the value of historical study for ripening men’s judgment of current affairs,[410] and indeed there were few relations of life in which an acquaintance with history did not seem to him indispensable.

But he felt that historical writing had not been adapted “to the demands of the increased circles among which literature does already find its way."[411] Accordingly he resolved to use in the service of history that “knack ... for selecting the striking and interesting points out of dull details,” which he felt was his endowment.[412] The original introduction to the Tales of the Crusaders has the following burlesque announcement of his intention, in the words of the Eidolon Chairman:  “I intend to write the most wonderful book which the world ever read—­a book in which every incident shall be incredible, yet strictly true—­a work recalling recollections with which the ears of this generation once tingled, and which shall be read by our children with an admiration approaching to incredulity.  Such shall be the Life of Napoleon, by the Author of Waverley.”  He wished to controvert “the vulgar opinion that the flattest and dullest mode of detailing events must uniformly be that which approaches nearest to the truth."[413] There is no doubt that his histories are readable, yet we feel that Southey was right in his comment on the Life of Napoleon,—­“It was not possible that Sir Walter could keep up as a historian the character which he had obtained as a novelist; and in the first announcement of this ‘Life’ he had, not very wisely, promised something as stimulating as his novels.  Alas! he forgot that there could be no stimulus of curiosity in it."[414] A recent critic has said, “Scott lost half his power of vitalizing the past when he sat down formally to record it—­when he turned from his marvellous recreation of James I. to give a laboured but very ordinary portrait of Napoleon."[415] His partial failure in this instance may have been due to an unfortunate choice of subject.  Only a few years before he wrote the book Scott had been thinking of Napoleon as a “tyrannical monster,"[416] a “singular emanation of the Evil Principle,"[417] “the arch-enemy of mankind,"[418]—­phrases which, in spite of their vividness, hardly seem to promise a life-like portrayal of the man.[419]