What, then, is the vital charm which makes the novel of incident true literature—the charm possessed by Dumas, and Fielding, and Sir Walter Scott? Mr. Birrell, who is always in love with plain definitions, says that if a book be full of “inns, atmosphere, and motion,” then it is a good book, and he asks no more. Mr. Lang, who shares this hearty sympathy for action, acknowledges that the best results are often obtained by the simplest machinery. “Dumas,” he declares, “requires no more than a room in an inn, where people meet in riding-cloaks, to move the heart with the last degree of pity and terror.” Scott handles incident with the matchless skill of a great story-teller. He shows the same instinctive art in his situations that a great painter like Rembrandt shows in his grouping. Every figure falls so inevitably into his right place that it is impossible for us to imagine him in any other. Henry Bertram’s return to Ellengowan is one of the most artistic and charming scenes in fiction, though it is described with such careless simplicity. Perplexed and fascinated by the childish memories tugging at his heartstrings, the young laird gazes at his ancestral home, and listens with rapture—which we share—to the fragment of a long-forgotten yet familiar song: “Are these the Links of Forth,” she said, “Or are they the crooks of Dee, Or the bonnie woods of Warroch-head, That I so fain would see?” There may be people who are in no way moved by this home-coming, and who feel no joy when Queen Mary’s boat glides over the dark waters of Lochleven, and no horror at that ill-omened churchyard gossip which ushers in the dreadful wedding of Lammermoor. I do not envy them their composure; but what of King Louis’s visit to the Duke of Burgundy in _Quentin Durward_, a situation so tense with passion that the least imaginative reader may well tremble at the possibilities of every minute? What of the sacking of Liege, the siege of Front de Bœuf’s castle, the trial of Rebecca, the battle of Bothwell Bridge? He who could carry a chilly indifference through such narratives as these would not care if Shylock gained his suit, or King Harry lost the field of Agincourt. I doubt if he would really care whether Hector or Achilles won the fight.