One more remark. My criticism was _confined_ to the one point of the higher degree of intellectual activity implied in the reading and admiration of Fielding, Richardson, and Sterne;--in moral, or, if that be too high and inwardly a word, in _mannerly_ manliness of taste the present age and its _best_ writers have the decided advantage, and I sincerely trust that Walter Scott's readers would be as little disposed to relish the stupid lechery of the courtship of Widow Wadman, as Scott himself would be capable of presenting it. And, that though I cannot pretend to have found in any of these novels a character that even approaches in genius, in truth of conception, or boldness and freshness of execution, to Parson Adams, Blifil, Strap, Lieutenant Bowling, Mr. Shandy, Uncle Toby and Trim, and Lovelace; and though Scott's _female_ characters will not, even the very best, bear a comparison with Miss Byron, Clementina Emily, in Sir Charles Grandison; nor the comic ones with Tabitha Bramble, or with Betty (in Mrs. Bennet's _Beggar Girl_); and though, by the use of the Scotch dialect, by Ossianic mock-highland motley-heroic, and by extracts from the printed sermons, memoirs, etc., of the fanatic preachers, there is a good deal of _false effect_ and stage trick: still the number of characters _so good_ produced by one man, and in so rapid a succession, must ever remain an illustrious phenomenon in literature, after all the subtractions for those borrowed from English and German sources, or compounded by blending two or three of the old drama into one--_ex. gr._ the Caleb in the _Bride of Lammermoor_.