ABSTRACT
Scott’s seriousness as a novelist was disputed almost from the start. ‘This ingenious and hitherto successful author’, said the reviewer of The Heart of Mid-Lothian in the British Review for November 1818, ‘seems to set no value on literary reputation but as it contributes to the sale of his books.’1 Latterly, respectability has been bought for him, at a high price. Scott is nowadays seen as a writer whose main achievement lies in his view of Scottish history, especially as it concerns the Union of 1707. But it does not follow that because Scott wrote historical novels he wrote them to express a feeling about historical change. ‘By going a century or two back’, Hazlitt thought, ‘all becomes new and startling in the present advanced period.’2 The Scottish novels do undoubtedly and inevitably ref lect a view of Scottish history, but history may nevertheless be seen as merely a backdrop to the ‘new and startling’ action of individuals. David Daiches rescued Scott from the accusation that he wrote simple adventure stories by arguing that it was ‘the complex of feelings with which [Scott] contemplated the phase of Scottish history immediately preceding his own time [...] that gave life’ to his best books.3 This very inf luential and ultimately unliterary view slights the focus and achievement of Scott’s art. This is especially the case with The Heart of Mid-Lothian, probably the best of all the Waverley novels.
