A secondary reason for the success of these poems was that they satisfied a fashion, very popular in Scott's day, which we have not yet outgrown. That fashion was to attribute chivalrous virtues to outlaws and other merry men, who in their own day and generation were imprisoned or hanged, and who deserved their fate. Robin Hood's gang, for example, or the Raiders of the Border, were in fact a tough lot of thieves and cutthroats; but when they appeared in romantic literature they must of course appeal to ladies; so Scott made them fine, dashing, manly fellows, sacrificing to the fashion of the hour the truth of history and humanity. As Andrew Lang says: "In their own days the Border Riders were regarded as public nuisances by statesmen, who attempted to educate them by means of the gibbet. But now they were the delight of fine ladies, contending who should be most extravagant in encomium. A blessing on such fine ladies, who know what is good when they see it!" [Footnote: Quoted in Nicoll and Seccombe, _A History of English Literature_, Vol. Ill, p. 957.] SCOTT'S NOVELS. To appreciate the value of Scott's work one should read some of the novels that were fashionable in his day,--silly, sentimental novels, portraying the "sensibilities" of imaginary ladies. [Footnote: In America, Cooper's first romance, _Precaution_ (1820), was of this artificial type. After Scott's outdoor romances appeared, Cooper discovered his talent, and wrote _The Spy_ and the Leather-Stocking tales. Maria Edgeworth and Jane Austen began to improve or naturalize the English novel before Scott attempted it.] That Scott was influenced by this inane fashion appears plainly in some of his characters, his fine ladies especially, who pose and sentimentalize till we are mortally weary of them; but this influence passed when he discovered his real power, which was to portray men and women in vigorous action. _Waverley_, _Rob Roy_, _Ivanhoe_, _Redgauntlet_,--such stories of brave adventure were like the winds of the North, bringing to novel-readers the tang of the sea and the earth and the heather. They braced their readers for life, made them feel their kinship with nature and humanity. Incidentally, they announced that two new types of fiction, the outdoor romance and the historical novel, had appeared with power to influence the work of Cooper, Thackeray, Dickens and a host of minor novelists. [Illustration: THE GREAT WINDOW (MELROSE ABBEY)] [Sidenote: GROUPS OF STORIES]