"Stick to drama, my dear fellow; you know you are dramatic through and through."
"Does it therefore follow that because, as you say, I am dramatic before everything else I ought not to write drama? Is there nothing dramatic outside the stage, and could one not put drama into a novel?"
"A novel! You want to do a romance after the style of Walter Scott?"
"Why not?"
But my interlocutor shook his head.
"Walter Scott has depicted localities, characters, manners; you must take the novel from Walter Scott's hands, as Raphael took art from Perugino's, and add the passions."
"If I were you—though I have no advice to offer you—I would stick to the theatre."
"Let me try."
"Oh! you are a free agent!"