ABSTRACT
In 1824 William Hazlitt, at the height of his powers as a critic, observed that 'Sir Walter Scott is undoubtedly the most popular writer of the age', cannily adding that he 'is "lord of the ascendant" for the time being'. The historical events on which the novels depend have largely receded from common knowledge, even in Scotland, and Scott's essentially eighteenth-century genteel style with its mannered periphrases is blamed for 'lassitude of language and tedium of depiction'. Edward Waverley, the Chevalier of Waverley and Redgauntlet, Harry Bertram, Henry Morton and Lord Evandale, Frank Osbaldistone and Rob Roy, Jeanie Deans and Redgauntlet are all characters 'who, always represent social trends and historical forces' in their maker's construction of Scotland's supreme, nostalgic fiction. In 1796 Scott's first publication was The Chase, and William and Helen: Two Ballads from the German of Gottfried Augustus Burger.
