[212] See also the Introductory epistle to Ivanhoe; and the Review of Walpole's Letters. "In attaining his contemporary triumph," says Mr. Brander Matthews, "Scott owed more to Horace Walpole than to Maria Edgeworth." The Historical Novel, p. 10.
[213] Scott uses the word.
[214] Mr. G.A. Aitken has given convincing evidence that the story was not invented by Defoe. Mr. Aitken also shows the falsity of Scott's statement that Drelincourt's book was in need of advertising, as William Lee, in his Life of Defoe, had previously done. (See The Nineteenth Century, xxxvii: 95. January, 1895; and also Aitken's edition of Defoe's Romances and Narratives, Vol. XV, Introduction.) A passage from Defoe's History of the Church of Scotland is quoted in the review of Tales of My Landlord, by Scott, who says that it probably suggested one of the scenes in Old Mortality. Scott there speaks of Defoe's "liveliness of imagination," and says he "excelled all others in dramatizing a story, and presenting it as if in actual speech and action before the reader." (Quarterly Review, January, 1817.)
[215] See also The Fortunes of Nigel, Vol. II, pp. 88-9.
[216] Life of Clara Reeve.
[217] Blackwood, March, 1818.
[218] Quarterly, May, 1818.
[219] See a reference to Voltaire and other French authors; Napoleon, Vol. I, ch. 2.
[220] Life of Richardson.
[221] We gather from Scott's article that he considered the following to be the chief "speculative errors" of Bage: he was an infidel; he misrepresented different classes of society, thinking the high tyrannical and the low virtuous and generous; his system of ethics was founded on philosophy instead of religion; he was inclined to minimize the importance of purity in women; he considered tax-gatherers extortioners, and soldiers, licensed murderers.