"The Black Dwarf" was condemned by Blackwood the publisher, and posterity has not differed from his verdict. The story had been written on a larger scale, but was truncated, said Scott, to the proportions of the dwarf. In 1817 "Rob Roy" gave us the best of all Scott's heroines, Diana Vernon, and the deathless Andrew Fairservice, and Bailie Nicol Jarvie, and the Dougal creature, with Rob himself, a tower of strength; but Helen, his wife, is somewhat melodramatic (as probably she actually was) and the plot, with its financial embroilment, is "only good for bringing in fine things".
It is difficult to decide between the rival excellences of "The Heart of Midlothian" (1818) (with another heroine, Jeanie Deans, as good and original in her way as Diana Vernon) and of "Old Mortality". We are apt to prefer the novel which we read last. Written "in torments," and totally forgotten by Scott after he had composed it, "The Bride of Lammermoor" has won tears for generations, though the doomed Master is something of a lay figure, and the pathos of the old Steward is better than his humour, which grows mechanical. The darkening of the omens towards the close is matched only in the "Odyssey" and "Njal's Saga"; for, though the novel is not in the first rank, it contains much of the author's best, and could have been written by no other mortal. With "The Bride" came the brief "Legend of Montrose," in which the great Marquess is half-forgotten, for Dugald Dalgetty, that matchless creation, runs away with Scott's fancy, happily carrying him to meet the rival Marquess of Argyll. Confessedly Scott could adhere to no predetermined plan (he tried to do so, again and again, but was conscious of failure); his characters were alive and masterful, and led him where they would, but he had never contemplated a romance in a theme above romance, the Action and Passion of Montrose.
Leaving Scotland—lest the field should be overworked—for England and the Middle Ages, Scott, in 1819, won the hearts of most boys and many men, by "Ivanhoe," the crusader who returns disguised, like de Wilton in "Marmion". It is to be believed that Scott disliked Rowena at least as much as Thackeray did, and was no less in love than he with Rebecca. Merely to think of the characters is a pleasure—Gurth, Wamba, Locksley, de Bracy, Friar Tuck, Isaac, the Abbot, while, if Urfried is extremely incoherent in her pagan creed, the Templar is Byronic enough for the taste of that day; Scott, in fact, could draw a dark Byronic dare-devil before Byron came into the field. "The Monastery" (1820) with the White Lady of Avenel, and the Euphuist Knight, was not well received, but Sir Walter boldly carried on the tale in an infinitely better sequel, "The Abbot," with all the charm and horror of Mary Stuart at Loch Leven, with a hero full of spirit, and a heroine worthy of him in Catherine Seyton.
In "Kenilworth" (1821), a most audaciously anachronistic tale, Scott treated Queen Elizabeth with a chivalry amazing in a Scot; his fated heroine, Amy Robsart, has unusual spirit and womanliness, and his villain, Varney, is his Iago, while Michael Lambourne is a perfect sketch of the Elizabethan adventurer of the baser sort.
In "The Pirate" (1821) Scott chose the scene of his tour in the Orkney Islands (1814), and his hero is, like George Staunton in "The Heart of Midlothian," rather a Byronic being. Minna and Brenda, the two fair sisters, were immensely admired, but Norna of the Fitful Head is much inferior to Madge Wildfire and Meg Merrilies as a seeress and a romantically eccentric being; while Claude Halcro and Triptolemus Yellowley are the least entertaining of "Scott's bores".
"The Fortunes of Nigel" (1822) is enriched with all the wealth of Scott's knowledge of Elizabethan and Jacobean plays and pamphlets, and the unsatisfactory hero, much the least sympathetic of Scott's jeunes premiers, is redeemed by the delightful humours of gentle King Jamie, by the two grim Trapbois, father and daughter, by the flower of Scottish serving-men, Richie Moniplies, and by all the life of the Court, of the Ordinary, and of Alsatia.
In "Peveril of the Peak" (1823) Scott is less fortunate in his treatment of English society during the Popish Plot, a theme which seemed "made to his hand". His Charles II. is the least excellent of his kings, and the plot is more than commonly rambling, while Fenella is the feeblest of his romantic and eccentric puppets. "Quentin Durward," on the other hand, with the adventures of a gallant but canny Scot at the perilous Court of Louis XI., is perhaps the best constructed of all his novels. In drawing Louis XI. the author excels himself; we have not too much of Leslie le Balafré, the Dugald Dalgetty of the age; the adventures are many and exciting, and the book was welcomed eagerly in France, though at first it was scarcely appreciated at home.
"St. Ronan's Well" was a tale of contemporary manners, but Scott was not skilled in describing the humours of a Tweedside watering-place, interwoven as they are with a dark domestic tragedy, spoiled by an incongruous conclusion which was forced on the author by the prudery of James Ballantyne. In "Redgauntlet," Scott recovered himself: the manners and characters are a little earlier than those of his own boyhood, and mingled with the adventures of the hero on the Border is the last tragic appearance of that Prince who, twenty years earlier, had shaken the three kingdoms with the claymores of the clans.