ABSTRACT
The article on The Omen was written between February and July, 1826. In February Sir Walter scott recorded the fact that he had read it in his Journal: Read a little volume called The Omen—very well written—deep and powerful language. We have novels which may take the old dramatic term of Chronicles; bringing real and often exalted persons on the stage; adorning historical events with such ornaments as their imagination can suggest. Introducing fictitious characters among such as are real, and assigning to those which are historical, qualities, speeches, and actions, which exist only in the writer's fancy. But the modern novelists, compelled, perhaps, by the success of their predecessors, to abandon a field where the harvest was exhausted, have, many of them, chosen elsewhere subjects of a different description. It is not perhaps possible, at the same time, to preserve consistency and probability, and attain the interest of novelty.
