You cannot read through the _dramatis personæ_ of one of these plays (Witgood, Lucre, Hoard, Limber, Kix, Lamprey, Spichcock, Dampit, etc.) without being reminded of the long list of originals that figure in the Scotch novels; and in one case at least, Baron Bradwardine of _Waverley_, Scott goes out of his way to compare him with a character of Ben Jonson's. And you cannot but feel that Scott has surpassed his models on their own ground, partly because his genius was greater and partly because the novel is a wider and freer field for such characters than the drama--at least when the drama is deprived of its stage setting. But Scott's greatest advantage is due to the fact that what in England was mainly an exaggeration of the more unsociable traits of character seems in Scotland to reach down to the very foundation of the popular life. His characters are not the creation of individual eccentricities only, but spring from an inexhaustible quaintness of the national temper. From every standpoint we are led back to consider the greatness of the author as depending on his happy genius in finding a voice for a rare and noteworthy phase of society. Much of the Scotch temperament, its self-dependence, clan attachments, cunning, its gloomy exaltations relieved at times by a wide and serene prospect, may be traced, as Buckle has so admirably shown, to the physical conditions of the land; and in reading the history of Scotland, with its stories of the adventures of Wallace and Bruce and its battles of Bannockburn and Prestonpans, it seems quite fitting that the wild scenery of the country should be constantly associated with the deeds of its heroes. There is something of charm in the very names of the landscape--in the haughs, corries, straths, friths, burns, and braes. The fascination of the Scotch lakes and valleys was one of the first to awaken the world to an admiration of savage nature, as we may read in Gray's letters; and Scott, from Waverley's excursion into the wild fastnesses of highland robbers and chiefs to the lonely sea-scenes of Zetland in _The Pirate_, has carried us through a succession of natural pictures such as no other novelist ever conceived. And he has maintained always that most difficult art of describing minutely enough to convey the illusion of a particular scene and broadly enough to evoke those general emotions which alone justify descriptive writing. Perhaps his most notable success is the visit of Guy Mannering to Ellangowan, where sea, sky, and land unite to form a picture of strangely luminous beauty. He not only succeeded in exciting a new romantic interest in Scotch scenery, but he has actually added to the market price of properties. It is said that his descriptions are mentioned in the title deeds of various estates as forming a part of their transmitted value.