Waverley (1961)

Abstract

It is a long time now since anyone coupled the name of Scott, as Hazlitt and Ruskin did, with the name of Shakespeare. Yet to Pushkin and Mickiewicz this coupling would have been natural, and Pushkin in fact explicitly made the comparison. Writing in 1830, he declared:

The principal charm of Walter Scott’s novels lies in die fact that we are introduced to the past not through the enflure of French tragedies, not through the primness of sentimental novels, not through the dignité of history, but in a contemporary, domestic manner … ce qui nous charme dans le roman historique — c’est ce qui est historique est absolument ce que nous voyons — Shakespeare, Goethe, Walter Scott have no servile predilection for kings and heroes….